A comment on energy policy...

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We're still being peddled the myth that, in the medium term at least, promoting renewable energy will result in lower bills. It may be the case that in fifty years technology and ubiquity will make those renewable sources produce cheaper energy than burning fossil fuels (or running nuclear reactors) but right now they are significantly more expensive.

It may well be that it's right to prioritise renewables development - there's still a strong argument for this (although I am less convinced by it these days) given the scale of climate change's down side risks. But this means that for the sake of "the planet", this generation has to put up with higher bills in the hope that this will bring forward the technology and ubiquity of renewable energy needed.

In simple terms - although to listen to Ed Miliband and Ed Davey let alone the greens you wouldn't believe this - we have a choice between "decarbonising" energy production and lower prices. Pretending otherwise is both dangerous and deluded.

So folks your choice is between cheap energy and the planet! You can start fracking, stop the closure of coal fired power stations, scrap the green levy and abolish cross-subsidy of renewables - and get lower fuel bills for voters. Or you can carry on as we are and see those fuel bills rise.

I know which choice I'd make right now.

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"One Million Pound A Vote" isn't quite enough for Labour to buy Green support....

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Windmills! Not sure about what I personally feel about them (although I'm unconvinced at their value as a solution to England's energy supply challenges - fracking and nuclear power look much better bets) but I do know that plenty of people aren't so keen on having them plonked in their back yard. Including a whole bunch in Denholme.

Right now Bradford Council is consulting on its 'Local Development Framework Core Strategy' which includes proposals for loads more windmills. Which will be sited (assuming the Council avoid the massive row that would come from putting them on Ilkley Moor) in Denholme and Queensbury where there's loads of wind. And residents in these places want to challenge these proposals.

However, it seems we needn't bother complaining since the Labour Councillor responsible for planning has already decided:

Councillor Val Slater, Bradford Council's executive member for planning, said: “Renewable energy ultimately means a cleaner district and less pollution. Although there is an increase in applications for wind turbines we don't actually receive that many.”

I guess this is part of the price that Bradford people will be paying for the backroom deal that led our three-strong Green group on Council to back almost everything the Labour Party propose! It seems that the "One Million Pounds A Vote" deal on renewable energy we saw at the budget council was only part of the payback for the Greens' support. They love windmills and the bigger the better!!

Councillor Martin Love, one of Shipley’s ward representatives and a member of the Green Party, said: “Any increase in renewable energy generation is to be welcomed.

“Something Bradford has got a lot of is hills and wind. We should utilise them for energy generation wherever we can. However, for Wind turbines to be effective we need bigger ones."

I will point out that the hills and wind aren't in Cllr Love's ward, of course!

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"Rubbing two sticks together" - the Green Party's energy policy

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Britain's Green Party - led by that nannying fussbucket, Caroline Lucas - have an energy policy.

1. Investment in renewable sources – sun, wind, water power and biogas – must be hugely increased. Use of fossil fuels should be massively reduced, and phased out altogether where possible.

2. An end to nuclear power. It is expensive and dangerous, risking catastrophic accidents that could damage our health, environment, and economy for generations.

3. More efficient energy use, better conservation and insulation measures, and a massive increase in recycling – with stronger incentives to switch to renewable energy and use energy more efficiently.

4. Energy should be generated, stored and distributed more locally.

5 Action to end 'fuel poverty' subsidising insulation and conservation measures to make fuel bills affordable for all.

So we have a policy that focuses on expensive, inefficient means of generating electricity - a combination of unreliable wind power, the destruction of habitats to allow wave power and Dave installing a windmill on his roof. At the same time the Greens want to end fuel poverty - presumably through some sort of rationing system since the rest of their policy can only result in higher energy costs. Assuming, of course, the we're actually able to generate all the electricity we need from windmills and compost heaps.

This policy is stupid and irresponsible, will make energy more expensive and is likely to lead to brownouts and even power cuts while we try to make generation match demand (all those electric cars you like so much, Caroline). Yet we give this idiot airtime to expound her lunacy without challenge - even to the point of conflating the deaths in Japan's terrible earthquake with the nuclear power plants at Fukushima:

"1351 is the estimated death toll so far, but there are perhaps tens of thousands people missing in Miyagi alone. Four million people have been left without electricity amid the destruction in Tokyo.

"Clearly, the nuclear incidents at Fukushima, and elsewhere in Japan since the earthquake, are collectively one of the worst in the 50-year history of the international nuclear industry."

Well certainly the incidents are serious - indeed, Ms Lucas seems more concerned about these that with the unfolding humanitarian disasters - but so far no-one has been killed, injured or made ill by the situation at Fukishima. As environmentalist James Lovelock put it in the Guardian:

"There is a monstrous myth about nuclear power. I would make a strong guess that of the tens of thousands of people killed in Japan, none of them will be from nuclear power."

He said that people were "prejudiced" against nuclear power unreasonably. "It is very safe," he said. Chernobyl, for instance, was "an idiotic mess-up that could only have occurred in the Soviet Union", and according to UN estimates had killed only about 56 people. More people are routinely killed in oil refineries and coal mines, he pointed out.

But this doesn't stop Caroline's line of "nuclear, scary, scary":

The Green MP Caroline Lucas said the Japanese accident strengthened the case against new nuclear construction. "You will never be able to completely design out human error, design failure or natural disaster," said Lucas, whose party backs energy efficiency and more renewable energy to meet Britain's energy and climate change goals.

So no fossil fuels - have to stop that "runaway global warming" - and no nuclear. It really does look like Ms Lucas and her Green Party want us to live in rude huts and rub sticks together for our energy needs!

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