Friday, October 1, 2010

Dabate: Can we afford offshore wind power ?

We got the largest wind farm currently in the world on our doorstep here in Deal - Rising steel prices and a weak pound have pushed up construction costs. The Ecologist has started the debate - what do you think?

"High costs of offshore wind farms could be reduced through investment in a UK manufacturing base says report, but warns nuclear is no cheap alternative

Most would agree that clean, renewable energy is a good thing. A much tougher question is, how much are we prepared to pay for it?

The cost of building offshore wind farms has doubled in the last five years, according to a new report by the UK Energy Research Centre published this week. Offshore wind farms now cost around £3m per megawatt hour to build, while the electricity itself costs around £150 per megawatt hour to generate once the building work is finished.

This makes it vastly more expensive than any other existing energy source. Electricity generated using onshore wind costs just £94 per megawatt hour, while nuclear would cost £99 per megawatt hour, according to figures published in June by the Department of Energy and Climate Change. read me ...

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