Decarbonisation Means Job Losses

This week, two myths about renewables were exploded. First, Bord na Mona, announced that there would be job losses as they moved away from peat harvesting and changed their focus to renewables. Trade Union leaders have estimated that the job losses could be anywhere between 300 and 850 in the next decade. 

Unite regional officer Ed Thompson said decarbonisation will result in further job losses.

Back in 2015, the Government were announcing wide scale job creation in their renewable energy White Paper :

 And we are committed to supporting businesses, workers and communities to make the transition away from older energy technologies – in the direction of new jobs, new technologies, and new opportunities.

Our energy transition will present further opportunities for job creation and economic growth. For example, it has been estimated that measures required to meet our 2020 renewable energy targets could deliver between 2,500 and 5,550 jobs in the bioenergy sector and up to 4,000 in onshore wind deployment

The media lapped this up at the time. But now reality is hitting home. I for one, am in favor of moving away from peat but the only viable job creating and sustainable alternative is fracking or offshore exploration. The Corrib natural gas field created 1,000 jobs during development. 



The other myth that was exploded this week was that wind farms are not damaging to wildlife. A UCC study that even RTE reported on showed that

Irish bird populations decrease in the areas immediately adjacent to wind turbines.The study found that the main reason appears to be the clearing of habitats during the construction of the wind farms.

Slieve Rushen Wind Farm

The Slieve Rushen wind farm, formerly owned by the Quinn Group, was recently sold for £ 100 million to Platina Partners, a London based company. This is a 54MW wind farm in Fermanagh that sells electricity to Northern Ireland in the single electricity market.

In 2008, it was revamped with 18 new Vestas V90 wind turbines and its capacity factor has been over 30% ever since. This is not surprising since it is in one of the windiest locations in the country on top of Slieve Rushen mountain.  

Records from SEM-O show that it received € 10.7 million euros in 2012 from the market in energy and capacity payments. The accounts of the company (Mantlin Ltd) are available for download in the UK companies office. These show a turnover of £ 15.6m for 2012. This converts to about € 19.3m when using the average conversion rate during the year. This means that the company receives renewable obligation credits, levy exemption certificates and curtailment and constraint payments (payments from UK grid to stop producing power) in the region of € 8.5m in total. This is quite a vast sum for activities unrelated to the generation of electricity. However, accounts show that the wind farm would have made an operating loss of £3 million as opposed to an operating profit of £3.8 million without these sources of income.

There is one more notable thing that sticks out when you read the accounts. On Note number 7, it states that the company had no employees during the year. The wind industry makes lots of claims about the number of jobs it creates, but here is one of the largest wind farms in the country employing the grand sum total of Zero employees.