Ireland Ranks near bottom of Renewable Targets Table

 Wind Energy Oriented Renewable Plans Fared Badly

Ireland just about reached it's 2020 renewable target of 16% equalling Poland, a country not exactly renowned for its love of the "green religion". Ireland ranked 20th out of the 27th member states. Only Belgium, Luxembourg, Malta, Holland and Hungary ranked lower.

So the question must be asked - where did Ireland go wrong after spending billions on renewable energy and building 5,000MW of wind farms ? 

Surely if wind speeds are so high in Ireland as we are often told, then Ireland should be in the top 10 of Europe ? 

Sweden, Croatia, Finland, Bulgaria, Latvia and Austria topped the list of renewable energy performers in the EU.

Here are the main sources of renewable energy for each country :

Sweden - hydro, biomass. Exports a lot of electricity to Finland.

Croatia - hydro with some wind and solar. Imports a lot of electricity.

Bulgaria - hydro and solar. 

Finland - biomass and hydro. Imports a lot of electricity from Sweden and Russia.

Latvia - biomass and hydro.

Austria - biomass and hydro.

And for countries outside the EU - - 

Iceland - geothermal.

Norway - hydro. Norway has 65 times as much hydro as wind.

This clearly shows that the most successful renewables are Hydro and bioenergy/biomass. There are also significant benefits to interconnection especially if the neighbouring country has a lot of hydro. For instance, Denmark has a similar amount of wind energy to Ireland, but relies heavily on imports from hydro based electricity in Norway and Sweden which means wind has to do a lot less heavy lifting than in Ireland (because imported electricity is emission free). Denmark ranks in the top 10 of the EU renewable energy targets table for this reason.

It looks like Ireland backed the wrong horse with wind energy.  However, based on past performance, it is unlikely that Ireland will put the brakes on and assess the situation.

Precarious Winter Outlook

According to the Eirgrid Winter Outlook, the Irish electricity system will be operating at twice the level of acceptable risk this winter. The system is expected to enter the Alert State at times of low wind, low interconnector imports and low temperatures. No mention is made of Huntstown or Whitegate power stations. Are they assumed to return as expected? We are not told [update: it appears that Huntstown will be back later this week]. 

There are a number of engineering realities that are laid bare in the report that are a sobering read and at odds with the endless spin that has been published in the past in the media about green energy. 

•  Only 9% of total wind energy capacity is deemed as reliable or can be relied upon. 

•  Forced outage rates (the rate at which power stations are breaking down) have increased by 5 times over the past 5 years. This would appear to indicate that these power stations cannot cope with higher levels of intermittent wind energy.

•  Some CCGT (gas) plant is scheduled to be unavailable for 5-6 weeks of the winter period because of scheduled maintenance. This will be in November and early March. There is no guarantee that wind energy will be available during these weeks and, hence, the highest risk of blackouts will occur during these periods. This proves that wind energy cannot replace, nor is it equivalent to, a power station. 

There is also another factor which does not seem to be included in this report. Wind farms, like power stations, also need maintenance - in particular, the older fleet. Whilst it is unlikely that a significant amount of them would break down at the same time, sourcing replacement parts may take more time than normal in the present supply chain crisis. 

This is the first time that Eirgrid have published a winter outlook that warns of a high risk of blackouts. Last year, they were concerned about a trend of "increasing demand, dispatchable generation exiting the market and increasing generator forced outage rates". 

They were correct, that trend has continued into this year. Did anyone listen or take note ? Of course not. But then Eirgrid's own chief, Mark Foley, dismissed concerns about blackouts, saying  people can sleep soundly in their beds this winter.  

We must trust the plan. 

How Close is Ireland to Blackouts ?

 

                                  Chart 1 - The green line includes all potentially available capacity whether currently in use or not. Some adjustments have been made to the red line to take account of the temporary loss of two gas and one oil generators . 

The above graph shows how Ireland's electricity supply position has evolved since the height of the building boom in 2006. The green line shows the total generation capacity that consumers must pay for including wind energy. As you can see the gap between the green line and peak demand in blue has increased exponentially in tandem with the building of new wind farms in yellow and new power stations in red. This gap is a large part of the reason why electricity bills have soared in recent years as the capital element of all of this capacity must be financed through bills regardless of how much energy they produce. So with all of this excess capacity, how is it that we are facing the prospect of blackouts? 

The red line is dispatchable plant, that is, plant that can be switched on at a moment's notice as required. The main ones in Ireland are gas, coal and oil power stations. The interconnector to England (EWIC) is also included in this however it's debatable how dispatchable this is in light of recent events (more on this later). Peat is also dispatchable but two of those power stations were closed down in 2020 leaving only one remaining peat station in Edenderry which also runs on biomass. It is due to be closed down in 2023. It has now finally being accepted by almost everyone (apart from the Green Party Energy Minister ?) that wind is not dispatchable and during long periods of low wind as we have had this year it is really the red line that we are relying on to keep the lights on.

The red line takes a noticeable dip after 2020. This is to take account of the loss of three power stations during 2021 - Huntstown 400MW, Whitegate 444MW and Tarbert 243MW. This has returned us to 2007 levels of dispatchable plant. This shouldn't present a serious problem, we managed okay back then. However, there are two main differences between now and back in the Tiger days :

1) Peak demand has increased by about 10%. The peak of 5,357MW was reached in December 2020. It is likely that this will increase further this winter which means the gap between the red and the blue line in Chart 1 will narrow even further. 

2) The rate of forced outages has increased dramatically in recent years. According to Eirgrid, the forced outage rate went from a low of about 3% in 2016 to a high of about 16% in 2021. The forced outage rate is the rate at which power stations are breaking down. Power stations are becoming less reliable and not just old ones. One reason for this is that they are switching on and off too much to balance the wind (more here) . 

The situation then is precarious enough but what happens if the UK does not have spare energy to give to us over the interconnector ? This has become a greater risk as energy shortages have recently become a major political issue in the UK. Chart 2 shows what happens when the EWIC is no longer available :

Chart 2

There is now a very small gap between the red and blue lines. 353MW to be exact. Which is about the size of a single power station. So another power station outage would leave us on the precipice and if the winter is a cold one demand will surely rise pushing us over the edge into blackout territory. 

To sum up here, it would take six events occurring at the same time to leave us in a very dangerous position - three of those are the three currently unavailable power stations not being repaired in time for winter, the fourth is the interconnector becoming useless, the fifth is either another power station breaking down or demand rising higher than last year. The trend for the fourth and fifth events is going the wrong way in all cases. The likelihood however of all 3 power stations not being repaired in time for winter is fairly slim although I have a feeling Whitegate may not be repaired by mid November as scheduled.

The sixth event is perhaps the biggest variable of all, the yellow line in the charts - wind energy. If there is plenty of it then in theory the majority of these events occurring simultaneously would not pose such a major problem. But if we have another lull as we have had this summer then that is a different story.

I say, in theory, because it is slightly more complicated than that. Certain power stations are required to be operating at all times to maintain the stability of the grid. Currently that includes Moneypoint coal power station. Moneypoint happens to be the oldest power station on the grid so there is a risk to the entire grid if it alone suffers an outage. No amount of wind energy can replace the inertia that Moneypoint provides to the system. 

In any event, the demand of large energy users will most likely be cut before we get near the precarious position of all or most of these events occurring together. 

Demand management they are calling it. Which is another form of blackout, just with a nicer name . 

Have A Green Green Christmas !

 Blackouts on the Way ?

Val Martin reports on what we predicted many years ago would happen as unreliable wind energy became a major energy source in the grid:

There are a number of unusual events occurring at the same time this winter :

• On the 10th December, peak demand exceeded that of 2010:

• Two peat power stations have been closed down by the Greens, a loss of 228MW
• Whitegate power station is offline due to a forced outage, a loss of 440MW
• Indaver waste to energy plant is offline due to a forced outage, a loss of 17MW
• The forced outage rates has increased every year for the past four years, which tends to support the theory that higher levels of wind energy leads to excessive cycling and ramping of generators which they were not designed for.
• Increased reliance on UK interconnectors, a country that has trouble itself with keeping the lights on.
• the all-island winter capacity margin has reduced every year over the past five years mainly due to increasing demand, dispatchable generation exiting the market and increasing generator forced outage rates. The capacity margin is the spare capacity available to meet peak demand. It is now at its lowest in recent times :

Source: Eirgrid Winter Outook

128% Increase in Oil Generation Last Year

 While there was much hullabaloo recently in the media about a 4.5% reduction in emissions last year, there was no mention at all about the reversal in the trend of oil generation.  Oil generation was  mostly phased out of electricity generation in the 2000s and replaced with efficient ccgt gas generation. However, 2019 saw a 128% rise in oil fired electricity generation, mainly due to Tarbert power station in Kerry which runs on heavy fuel oil. 

With Moneypoint coal power station running much less last year (almost 70% less),  the official story is that wind and gas were able to fill the gap left by the loss of Ireland's largest power station, but in truth Tarbert power station only 2km away across the River Shannon, was also important in keeping the lights on. 

Oil fired generators are fast acting, they can be switched on very quickly, but are less efficient and more polluting than modern gas power stations. This blog predicted many years ago, as did  experts like Pat Swords, that more wind energy would result in more fast acting generators such as oil to balance the grid. Hence, emissions savings from wind would be offset by increasing reliance on oil. 

The 128% figure comes from a new EPA report, page 11 :

https://www.epa.ie/pubs/reports/air/airemissions/ghgprovemissions2019/EPA-Prov_GHG-Inventory-Report-1990-2019_final.pdf

£5 billion Wind Subsidy Scandal in Northern Ireland

David O’Neill, Secretary of West Tyrone Against Wind Turbines writes on the latest energy scandal to hit Northern Ireland, this time involving £5 billion wasted on wind farms.

So, Sam McBride is currently the journalistic hero for his reports last week on what was essentially a denial of funding to hard pressed public services that could have done with this people sourced money. The funding went in part to some local land owners, but also to faceless outside investors who have honed their subsidy harvesting skills by re-engineering to smaller rotors or altering outputs to lower levels to make them look smaller.

I noticed however that this was almost immediately on the release of the NI Auditor General’s publication of the investigation into subsidies in the wider energy field. It was good that he reported this, but was he merely reflecting the AG’s (and possibly others) work? Let’s not forget that he also reflected on a Daily Mail report by Sam Greenhill on small wind, who in turn was assisted by the research efforts of Dr John Constable and his team at the REF. Dr Constable is painfully aware of bad energy policy with stakeholder influence acting in union to obfuscate the real and meaningful figures. His report is thanks to the development (hard work) of largely markets based database systems. Also deeply concerned about fuel poverty and security of supply; he keeps his other eye on UK grid data. Incidentally he does not attribute the EWIC to much by way spinning inertia. He is extremely busy but has found time to work with Professor Gordon Hughes, leaving me with no doubt of more revelations to come.

Higher Levels of Back-Up for Ireland's Renewables Based Grid

The grid operator in Ireland has always required back up generation, known as operating reserves, in the event that a power station fails which could cause a widespread blackout. Usually, these are powered by fast acting fossil fuel plant which can be switched on in an instant. But Ireland's transition to a wind powered based grid has not resulted in less back-up, but more back-up generation which obviously has an impact on the ability of wind to reduce emissions.

The first table below is from a few years ago and shows four different types of operating reserve with a minimum requirement of 110MW during the day and 75MW during the night.

The next table is from 2020 and shows that Reserves have increased to 155MW during the day and 150MW during the night - a 40% increase during the day and a doubling during the night.

 In a 2007 report, prepared for Eirgrid, titled "Wind Variability Management Studies (P.Meibom et al)" , Danish scientists and University researchers concluded that:

 "Generally, the demand for replacement reserves increases with
increasing wind power capacity installed.

The occurrence of high demands for replacement reserves is
mainly driven by a high number of simultaneous forced outages that happens
simultaneously to relatively high wind power. The value of these peaks tends to increase with increasing wind power capacity installed."

In another 2005 study by R. Doherty and M. O’Malley of UCD Dept of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, titled “A new approach to quantify reserve demand in systems with significant installed wind capacity” it was stated that :

The methodology is applied to a model of the all Ireland electricity system, and results show that as wind power capacity increases, the system must increase the amount of reserve carried or face a measurable decrease in reliability [i.e. increase the risks of a blackout - blog note].

So this was well known, that as you increase wind energy, the grid becomes more unstable, and more back-up reserves are needed. It's becoming increasingly clear that Ireland has already reached it's limit on wind generation, where the benefits are more than offset by the costs.

Fuel Consumption 2012 to 2018 - the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

In the course of the transition we will gradually reduce our dependence on the fossil fuels – coal, peat, oil and gas – that currently dominate our energy mix - Alex White, Energy Minister, White Paper, 2015

Despite massive efforts to reduce carbon emissions and fossil fuel dependence by successive Irish governments, the efforts have largely proven a failure, as fossil fuel consumption rose by 15% between 2012 and 2018. The government placed an overemphasis on wind energy as the solution, which doubled in capacity during that time to 3,600MW. Demand may also have increased, which in of itself is a failure to reduce consumption habits, and an over emphasis on the generating of electricity. Demand could have been tackled through retrofitting, promotion campaigns aimed at reducing consumption, moving away from the GDP standard, encouraging saving rather than spending (central bank have been doing the opposite), and preventing population growth by curbing immigration.

The main driver of the increase was petroleum products, including natural gas (used in power stations), which has risen by about 20%.

Natural Gas increased by 20%

In 2012, gas generated half of our electricity, as it did again in 2018, but this time with a significantly higher gas consumption. When your car comes off the motorway and goes into ‘stop start’ urban driving it burns more fuel, just like power plants forced into such operation, as intermittent wind energy pours on and off the grid.   

In their favor, coal and peat decreased by 23% and 8% respectively. The reduction in these, contrary to the common held belief, was due to several factors  - an increase in gas, oil, renewables and electricity imports from the UK (the East West Interconnector began operation in late 2012).  The US achieved a 27% reduction in CO₂ emissions during the period 2008 to 2017 by simply switching from coal to gas. So too emissions savings in Ireland arise from switching from coal to gas, a lower emitting fuel,  and importing electricity from the UK, where the resulting emissions are counted, and after that, renewables make up the rest of the savings.  

Peat decreased by 8%

For gasoil and diesel we can see that not only has dependence on transport risen, but  oil used in power generation has also, quite remarkably, increased. Much of this increase is due to an oil powered station in Kerry (Tarbert) which ran more in the grid, presumably because of the closures at Moneypoint. There are also more demand side units, which comprise of diesel generators.

We can also see that we are more addicted to air travel than ever, as jet kerosene consumption doubles. How could a virus pandemic ever be prevented from reaching our shores ?

So we have to ask the question, why are we still consuming high amounts of fossil fuels, after installing so many wind turbines ?  Media reports that show that a high percentage of our electricity came from wind fail to mention what we actually saved as a result. If I cycle from Dublin to Galway, but a car follows me all the way, what have I actually saved ? It is obvious now that they are not a long term solution to reducing dependence on fossil fuels. 

In 2020, there is still, regrettably, peat being used in electricity production, although there is an issue about the impact on employment in the midlands region that has still not being resolved. The renewables industry, as we now know, is not a big employer. 

The Energy Bubble

Generating Capacity for the Republic of Ireland, we have over twice as much as we need

The above graph shows how an energy bubble has been created in the past decade. Whereas in 2006, at the height of the building boom, we only needed enough generating capacity to cover 1.3 times the peak demand, we now have 2.4 times the capacity required. Peak demand levels in 2019 are the same as 2006 levels. All this capacity has to be paid for either through the market or from subsidies that are added on to energy bills. New fossil fuel plant are also in the pipeline.

The Cost 

The EU publishes an energy price report every two years. The last year available of full data is 2016; which shows a circa €490 billion bill for energy sources, €212 billion being imported fossil fuels, plus an additional tax squeeze of €280 billion, of which €76 billion in subsidies is for the renewable sector equating to €208 million per day or €150 from each citizen.

€48 billion was paid directly to wind and solar generators on top of the market price for generating 13% of EU’s electricity mix. 

The market price plus tax paid to gas and solid fuel generators, for generating 41% of the EU's electricity mix, were also €48 billion. 

Turkeys would not vote for Christmas if they were able to educate themselves.

Does Wind Energy Reduce CO2 Emissions ?

There has been a lot of coverage recently about how much wind energy is contributing to the electricity grid, but how much CO2 is it really saving ?

The graphs below, based on data from eirgrid dashboard, show that on some days there is absolutely no savings at all.

The two days being compared are 23rd January 2020 and 29th of November 2019. Note that wind generation (blue) on 29th November is over 7 times that of 23rd January 2020 but CO2 emissions (in yellow) are virtually identical.

East West interconnector (in green) minus figures are exports, pluses are imports. At 329 grams CO2 on both days EWIC imports are very close 84 and 81 MW on the 23rd January 2020 and 76 and 1 MW 29th of November 2019 (circled). However, even though wind output is over 5 times higher on the 29th November, CO2 emissions remain static at 329. 

This raises serious questions about the effectiveness of wind energy in the irish grid. 

Thanks to John Dooley for providing the graphs. 

ESB Profits show that Wind Energy has not Reduced Reliance on Fossil Fuels

ESB operate most of the fossil fuel powered generators in Ireland. Their gas, peat and coal generating plants amount to about 3,400 MW. Hydro about 400MW and wind about 450MW. So about 80% of their generation is from fossil fuel sources.

Given that Ireland now has in total about 3,500MW of wind, we should, if the wind energy supporters are right, see wind energy eroding profits in ESB generation.

But their latest results show that their Generation and Trading business has increased it's profits by    € 26 million to € 70 million. Although there was lower running in Moneypoint, this was more than offset by a higher margin in gas plants. 

A breakdown of this profit is not given, but we can safely assume that most of it came from fossil fuel generation since that comprises 80% of their business as I have shown above. It is indicative that during the same period, there was an impairment charge (i.e. a write down) of €1.8 million for a wind farm.

So almost a decade on from Ireland's Renewable Energy Action Plan which stated that :

Renewable energy reduces dependence on fossil fuels, improves security of supply, and reduces greenhouse gas emissions creating environmental benefits while delivering green jobs to the economy, thus contributing to national competitiveness. 

 we can now see that wind energy does not reduce dependence on fossil fuels, rather, it maintains dependence on it.

Reality of Renewable Energy Hitting Home

It looks like the reality is finally hitting home that wind energy will not be lowering energy bills, even the mainstream media now seem reconciled to this fact.

"We import a huge amount of our energy from abroad," he said. "We import gas, coal and oil, and unfortunately all of those fossil fuels are increasing in price and still remain very, very high on international markets. Unfortunately, this means that further price increase cannot be ruled out in the months ahead."Mr Cassidy said renewable energy will not necessarily be cheaper. ESB is investing in wind energy but investment costs money."Renewable energy is greener, it is cleaner but it is not necessarily cheaper energy yet, so just because we are using more renewable energy doesn't mean that's going to lead to lower bills just yet."

Wind Industry Admits Wind Energy Costs Money

But claim only as little as €1 per person

A recent Irish Wind Energy Association report has stated that the total net cost of wind energy to the consumer has been one euro per person per year since 2000. It is an interesting report for a number of reasons, not least, that this is the first time the wind industry in Ireland have admitted that wind energy costs money. 

The total cost calculated was €0.1bn, but this includes savings from not having to pay EU fines of € 0.7bn. Since it now looks like we will miss our targets regardless of how much more Ireland invests in wind (and unlikely in any event that the EU will impose fines on Member States), the actual cost then of wind energy according to the report was €0.8bn , eight times the cost claimed.  

Their calculations were based on wholesale price and capacity payments savings of €2.5bn  on one side and costs of €3.3bn on the other side arising from the PSO Levy, DS3, grid investment and constraint costs. This is the first time that the wind industry have acknowledged that these last three costs are directly related to increased levels of wind. This blog has argued that they should be included as wind related costs for many years now. 

I have shown before that the link between higher levels of wind and lower wholesale prices is tenuous. Wholesale prices are actually rising as investment in wind is at it's peak. The wind industry report used models to calculate their wholesale price savings rather than real data. I can no longer find any real time pricing data on the new SEMO website.  But if it is really the case that wind has led to €2.3bn in wholesale price savings plus €200m in capacity payments savings, then that means that power stations have taken a hit of €2.5bn over the 20 year period, with some additional revenue of €0.5bn from additional constraint payments. So about €2bn in lost revenue, the equivalent of about one whole year of wholesale payments lost to fossil fuel generators.  There is some evidence that has come out in recent days that shows that power stations are now losing money. Last year, ESB were forced to write down the value of two of their power stations. 

Finally, the report admits what I've been writing about for years, that only 10-11% of wind energy can be relied on as equivalent conventional capacity (capacity credit) :

The rate at which wind capacity reduces the capacity requirement is defined by the wind capacity credit, which is around 11% of installed wind capacity.

Under the I-SEM capacity market rules, wind receives a capacity credit of about 10% and OCGTs a capacity credit of about 92%. This means that 1 GW of wind is replaced by 109 MW (= 1 GW * (10% / 92%) of OCGTs.

The Wind Aware Ireland report goes into detail on the various wind related costs (they calculated a cost of € 1.2bn per year). I do not want to rehash all of those points, for those interested you can read the report here. But for further proof that costs across the board are increasing every year as more wind is added, one need look no further than the recent Ancillary Systems Services Report released by Eirgrid. When compared with the same report from three years ago, the costs to maintain back up reserves has more than doubled :

The full IWEA report can be read here.

Alternative Renewables - Waste to Energy

Dates : 12th and 13th January, 2019 [Source SEM-O] 

As the renewable energy programme has proceeded in Ireland without any form of supporting analysis, there has never been a proper economic assessment of the cost of reducing carbon emissions, using wind energy or any of the other ten sources of renewable energy listed in Directive 2009/28/EC.

Indeed, of the eleven different sources of renewable energy defined in the 2009 Directive, many are of a diffuse nature and more suited to being applied for heat energy rather than the generation of electricity. An example of this being the use of solar energy for water heating, which is a simple technology approach, such as circulating water through evacuated glass tubes.

Typical well-installed systems provide up to 60% of hot water demand over 12 months [SEAI].

The cost effectiveness of this approach can be determined from the fact that such installations were in use even before grants for their installation became available, as could also be said in relation to biomass (wood based) heating systems and aerothermal and geothermal systems for space heating.

If we consider a Waste to Energy (WtE) plant, the waste is combusted at a minimum temperature of 850 ⁰C producing in the boiler high pressure steam for electricity generation and hot water for use in district heating. Some 50% of the waste is of biogenic origin (biomass) and therefore 50% of energy produced is from a renewable source.

If this waste had instead gone to landfill, the biogenic fraction would have rotted and produced methane, which is a global warming gas with a Global Warming Potential (GWP) of 28 – 36 over 100 years. In other words it is some 28 to 36 times more potent than carbon dioxide. While the landfill gas collection system would have captured some of this methane for combustion in gas engines, figures show that of the order of 40% is directly released to atmosphere. In a WtE plant, the heat and mass balance shows 810 kWh of electricity produced per tonne of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) combusted with about 0.72 kg biogenic CO2 and 0.53 kg fossil CO2 per kWh of direct emissions.

In the same timeframe that a 2004 report by ESB was stating that utilising a low penetration of wind energy to reduce a tonne of carbon dioxide was €120, it was being reported that the cost to avoid 1 tonne of CO2 with WtE was about €43, whereas the costs to avoid 1 tonne of CO2 with (other) biomass was €80. Indeed, if district heating systems are used in addition to solely electrical outputs, then this WtE CO2 avoidance cost reduces to the range €7 to €20.

It is therefore very difficult to reconcile these values with the claims made by many greens in Ireland, which are provided without any supporting evidence, that wind energy represents Ireland’s “cheapest renewable electricity resource”. But there is also evidence that increasing amounts of wind energy is discriminating against other forms of renewable energy.

The figure at the top of this article shows the relevant capacity factors for wind energy in Ireland and a Waste to Energy plant in Co. Meath over two days in January 2019. This facility treats some 200,000 tonnes of MSW per annum, with an electricity output of 18 MW, which was until recently a continuous output, with over 50% being classified as renewable. Outside of a short annual maintenance period this output is continuous so the WtE developer could in this case justifiably claim that this 18 MW is “enough to power more than 22,000 homes”

Yet there was so much wind energy on the grid on the 12th and 13th January that other generators had to be taken off line and kept on hot standby ready to ramp up, when the inevitable happened and the wind dropped. This can be clearly seen in the graph, where the WtE plant had to be taken off the grid for extended periods. However, such a waste to energy plant can’t be simply throttled back, the waste is still arriving and the furnace temperature has to be kept at a minimum of 850 ⁰C. Instead the steam generated simply has to be dumped into the plant’s cooling system rather than be used to generate steam. Not only is this a loss of revenue to the WtE operator, but it is reflected in resulting higher costs for waste disposal of those using that facility.

It could be argued that discrimination is occurring, in that renewable energy produced at the WtE plant, in a far more reliable and cost effective manner, now has to be dumped to facilitate ever more wind energy being placed on the grid. Wind energy, which by its highly variable and intermittent nature is deeply flawed for the production of significant amounts of electricity. Indeed, as is shown above, this wind output basically isn’t there when it is needed for days on end and then it floods the grid for a short period with high inputs. This can only be managed by discriminating against other users, including those which are lower cost and more reliable renewable inputs. It is also fair to say that this is what you get, when you allow a ‘wild west’ of wind farm developments, without any analysis, without any assessments or without any of the legally required rules to ensure that authorisation is transparent, proportionate and does not discriminate between individual renewable technologies.

Reference WtE cost €43 per MW to avoid 1 tonne of CO2 :

https://www.powerengineeringint.com/articles/print/volume-15/issue-5/features/waste-to-energy-energy-no-time-to-waste.html