In every hospital that has special needs baby unit in this country there lies a child whose life depends on a reliable uninterrupted supply of electricity.
The Cutty Sark is famous for being the fastest ship ever built and, like the proposed off-shore wind farms, it was wind powered and "zero carbon", in spite of it being mostly made of steel. The Cutty Sark is in dry dock because it won its accolade on the back of favourable weather on the day and could never repeat it again, being becalmed too often for profit. Given that on land it takes 20 years for a wind turbine to generate as much energy as it took to make even the concrete it stands in I suspect that the off-shore wind generation machines will themselves be scrapped or abandoned as monuments of human folly in trying to catch the wind, their arms wilting in desperate abandonment of a quasi religion that failed to meet expectations. For every generation project dependent on the weather we have to have a back system that automatically steps in to stream on full power immediately and without any noticeable pause because although wind may be tree-hugger friendly but if we depend on it that baby dies.
Coal fired power stations, and waste burning generators have to be lit and got burning well before their power can be harnessed. You cannot switch to a cold power station when the wind drops it has to be already running hot, and if it was running hot that heat was being wasted while the wind was blowing. That cannot be right, we must not allow that waste. Apart from the fact that someone is paying for that fuel and hardware it would be very bad for the environment to just have heat being sent out to no purpose. So we either have carbon burning power stations and use them all the time to the exclusion of all others or we have none. The modern way of thinking is that we should not be sending men to sweat in the bowels of the earth to bring up carbon based fuel – especially since we can get it to come up through pipes more easily.
So if the wind drops we could have the fuel rods of a nuclear power station slide down into business to fill the gap without the lights even blinking. It is a fast switch on and start up system that emits no carbon whatsoever, it makes no smoke.
All of this has been known for decades yet this country is facing power cuts for lack of generating capacity – the baby in intensive care being kept alive with a smoky local diesel powered emergency generator as if in the third world outpost.
People matter, government is set up to make sure people have what they need in order to live and make a living. New Labour failed to believe that and delayed the new nuclear age for Britain. New Labour have departed so why have we still not got nuclear power plants being sorted and brought online?
Chris Huhne, Energy Secretary, has a lot to answer for!