A total of 2,271 representatives from 175 countries are attending the Bangkok meeting, of which 1,417 are government officials, according to a UN official.

Good grief. This bandwagon will not be easily stopped.

FYI:

"Airplane contrails worse than CO2 emissions for global warming: study"

http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-03-airplane-contrails-worse-co2-emissions.html

This doesn't seem to be attracting much media attention:

UN climate meeting kicks off in Bangkok

BBD -
P.S. I could have saved my few remaining brain cells some work by consulting this calculator. It arrives at 1800 kWh per year, and FIT of £550K per year, for a south England installation of 2000 kWp, if installed before March 2012. So perhaps I've misinterpreted the terms of the £14M deal?

BBD -
Good luck with getting your Council to look at what it's doing, and where the investment capital is *really* coming from -- you're quite correct, it comes from the ratepayers and not out of the blue.

But your figures (£14 million for a 2 MW solar-PV installation) make me question my calculations. I estimate that such a project would generate about 1750 MWh per year. [Average insolation in southern England is around 100 W/m^2, meaning (if I understand this correctly) that the 2MW peak-rated installation will produce about 10% of that on average. Insolation generally is less for more northerly sites. Average production at the Huddleston site mentioned in prior post is around 5% of the 17.6 kW rating. 10% times 2 MW times 8766 hours/year gives 1750 MWh/yr.] My understanding is that the current FIT rate for an installation of this size -- over 100 kWpeak -- is around 30p per kWh; thus the FIT payout comes to about £525K per year. That's a 3.75% return on the £14M investment, which doesn't sound like it would be attractive to an outside investor, especially when one considers downtime and other risks of reduced production. So, something is amiss, and I suspect it's my figures...or perhaps I haven't grasped some other aspect of the proposed deal.

Bishop, any chance of a summary post on Steve McIntyre's recent amazing discoveries? The practices he seems to have uncovered seem to have blown an even bigger hole into some of the treering reconstructions and the idea that their authors practice full honest disclosure. But I'm rather lost among the Tornetrasks and can't quite work out how new this all is.

HaroldW

My council is proposing a 2 MW SPV installation on the roofs of council housing, at a cost of £14 million.

It trumpets the fact that the money is supposed to be coming from a 'finance partner' but does not explain that this will be VC 'investing' in the project in order to harvest profits from the FIT over the next 25 years.

Nor does it advertise the fact that the net effect of this scheme will of course be to increase everyone's energy bills - hurting the least well-off the hardest. Which is, of course, essentially regressive taxation.

But to them, it's a 'win, win, win situation' and an opportunity for one of the vilest displays of greenwashed hypocrisy I have ever witnessed.

Of course the scheme will only enrich the investors if it can be rushed through before 1 August, when the new and MUCH lower SPV FIT for >250kW arrays comes into force. And the council is bending over backwards to make that happen.

Greed and stupidity make such good dance partners, don't they?

Philip

No, I wouldn't bet on HVDC, but as I said, equatorial/low latitude Big Solar is the only renewable technology with the potential to power a significant percentage of the global economy (one day, maybe). But overnight storage and conversion losses will be a horrible problem. Perhaps a deal-breaker. Or perhaps the politics will be, or cable security etc etc. You know I'm not an energy fantasist (well, I hope you).

Personally I'm with you on thorium MSRs but there's rather a lot of development work to do, and as you say, no political will to get started with the funding.

Oh, and the link you put up on Thursday to the DECC FIT consultation paper was very helpful. I am opposing my local council over a large-scale solar pv proposal (financed by private equity) and I should already have read that. So thanks again.

Cost-benefit of renewables:

From a post at WUWT by one Marion are references to "green" projects undertaken without any regard for cost/benefit, at a Kirklees Council building in Huddleston (Civic Centre 3). [The project posting is dated 2011, but they speak of 2009 in the future tense -- most likely it's an old (2008) report which was only recently posted on that site.] First off, from the accounting end of it, the Council acknowledge £80K, about a third of the cost, was subsidy, but that's a good thing to them. After all, it's "free" money, isn't it? Also, I don't see a maintenance item, which as the WUWT poster indicates, would seem to be an item of importance; but then as of the time that the report was written, the turbines had only required "minimal maintenance."

OK, back to cost/benefit. They cite wind turbine production as 8,000 kWh/year, from two 6-kW turbines. (Average production is ~8% of rated maximum, which seems reasonable.) At 20 pence per kWh, that results in a savings of £1600 per year, on an investment of £100K. Let's see, that's a 60-year payback period...and assumes zero maintenance costs and an indefinite equipment lifetime. Even discounting the £30K of "free" money, this isn't a smart move.

Their solar PV installation has similar figures -- 9000 kWh/year produced, at an investment cost of £100K. [Again, about a third of that is "free" money.]

Why do the proponents of such schemes think they makes sense? I rather think they will justify it as symbolic, but to me it's a symbol only of the foolishness of all-renewable-is-good thinking.

*The Council measure the benefit in terms of metric of tonnes of CO2 avoided. The turbines and PV have avoided about 10 tonnes of CO2 emission per year. For about £200K of investment, mind you! Using the utilities' rate of £5 per tonne of CO2, that's £50 per year equivalent, on £200K investment -- a smashing return of 0.025% per year.

I note that the Council propose "energy efficiency works [which] could reduce carbon emissions in excess of 100 tonnes per year at a cost of £8,200/tonne pa." That's an enormous cost. But in the context of the above calculation, which yields £20K per (tonne CO2 per year), such "efficiency" would seem almost sensible.

Cold weather causes CO2 increase, panic !!!!!

Ironic or just sad, take your pick.

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/climate-change/long-cold-spell-led-to-rise-in-greenhouse-gas-2258763.html