Trust chairman Ratter gives wind farm talk at Parliament event
The chairman of Shetland Charitable Trust Drew Ratter is in Edinburgh today to give a talk on the Viking Energy wind farm at an event in the Scottish Parliament.
The event, Great Green Danes, was organised by Nordic Horizons, a Scottish group aiming to raise awareness of Nordic political and social models, and the focus of the event is on the island of Samso in Denmark.
In 1997, the community in Samso won a contest to become the country’s showcase for sustainable power, and have since become carbon neutral, and a net exporter of renewable energy. Soren Hermansen from the island is in Edinburgh to share the community’s experiences.
More information can be found at nordichorizons.org.
ian tinkler
Nice impartial chat then. King rat in Salmond’s palace. What a shame global warming appears to have stopped. Never mind £14 million down so far, have to try and justify spending that and a bit more £1billion interconnector?. A bit like £6 million down, to keep that white elephant from sinking how about £600k more. Only Shetland Council could manage to waste money so well. God help our kids with the present gentlemen in charge. I use that gentlemen word with a biblical definition, Isaiah 55:8-9.
Douglas Young
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9559656/Germanys-wind-power-chaos-should-be-a-warning-to-the-UK.html
Johan Adamson
Change the name of the Charitable Trust to Shetland Windfarm Trust for Wealthy Beneficiaries
John Tulloch
It’s all very well rubbing shoulders with all these “Great Green Dane” luvvies like Herman Sorenson, don’t forget Denmark and Germany who have the highest concentrations of so-called “green energy” also have the highest electricity prices in the world with South Australia and its imminent carbon tax in hot pursuit – SOMEBODY haes tae pay for it!
I’m unsure who pays for Sorenson’s green Samso Shangri-La however In Scotland and the UK’s case, it’s the burgeoning ranks of the fuel poor.
James Mackenzie
From the Nordic Horizon website:
“Great [sic] Scottish speakers are coming — Drew Ratter from Shetland Islands Council on its pretty enormous Viking wind project and Martin Mathers from Scottish Power Renewables (in personal capacity) who once studied Samsoe for a dissertation.” Note the phrase “pretty enormous”.
The link http://www.chrissmithonline.co.uk/.a/6a00d8341c5b0b53ef017d3fac2f61970c-popup
is to a poster implying that “big” may be not be beautiful – it seems to be a theme Nordic Horizons is keen to pursue.
I remember Søren Hermansen speaking at NAFC a few years ago about Samsø, and saying something like: “Lesson number one: don’t get into bed with big energy companies.” I wonder what Drew Ratter’s take on that will be.
Sandy McMillan
Why Councillor Ratter, he will sell us down the river, with his patter on how good this will be for Shetland, I can hear him now, not a word uttered from his gob on the damage these wind farms will cause to the enviroment, Tourism, Etc Why has he not taken some one with him that knows all about the negetive prospects, as there are plenty,REASON Councillor Ratter wants the stage to him self, this is very biaz as far as Sustainable Shetland is concerned, Ian Tinkler has his number,
Councillor only came back to the Council to destroy Shetland, not for any other reason that i can see, there are others with the sams attitude as King RATter.
Donnie Morrison
I thought the Charitable Trust was impartial.
Interesting then to see that the Chairman is in Edinburgh to give a talk to the Scottish Parliament on Viking Energy.
Good to see the CT funds are now in such safe hands.
You cooldna mak it up.
Donnie Morrison
george henry
We might as well make use of the wind that is predominant here, because in the future the oil will eventually run out.
John Tulloch
Anyone hoping oil will run out soon shouldn’t hold their breath – they won’t live to see it, whether they hold or not.
Jim Fraser
Perhaps it would be more appropriate for this Trustee to give a talk on Viking Energy to the folk he represents and owners of the Trust funds, the people of Shetland that is. With VE running a web site almost a year out of date while continuing their activities within a cloak of secrecy, no one has a clue what they are doing and, more importantly, what they are spending the funds on.
An unwilling investor I may be, along with many others, nevertheless current information on this project’s activities should always be readily available to the public as a condition for Trust funding.
James Sandison
Thanks to Douglas Young for highlighting this Telegraph article. To amplify this point of view, consider the following ;
No, the wind does not always blow,
Nor does the sun always shine,
Much of the time the there’s no strong tidal bore,
Nor do waves always crash on the shore,
As the oil wells dry up, soon much less oil will flow.
All the above just goes to show,
That all sources of energy are fickle, and will leave us all in a terrible pickle.
The following is from the Energy Information Administration website;
“The most recent available data show that while the world produced 74.061 million barrels of oil per day; it consumed 87.616 million. By 2020, the International Energy Agency says the world will need 99 million barrels per day. The problem with that? The world has NEVER produced more than 91 million barrels per day. So we need to start producing at least 8 million more barrels of oil per day in the next few years, roughly the equivalent of what the U.S currently produces, just to keep up with demand. During the recent “shale boom,” the world has added five million barrels per day of production. We’ll need another 1.6 shale booms to just keep pace with demand over the next seven years.”
Now to mention a major tenet of Peak Oil – flow rates. One or two or ten trillion barrels in the ground does absolutely no good until it’s extracted. Think about it this way;
You need to fill up a bucket of water. You have two methods of doing so: a hose and a block of ice.
Using the hose is easy and takes seconds. It turns on and off with ease. This is the light, sweet crude we’ve been producing for decades.
This new oil we’re finding, while there is a lot of it, is much harder to get — like the block of ice. It takes different techniques, it takes much longer, and you cannot get as much as fast, and will be much more expensive in the long run.
This is the current position of global oil.
The major oil taps such as Ghawar, Cantarell, Prudhoe Bay, and similar giant fields have all peaked and are declining at 8%-10% per year. No more Giant oilfields are being found, and the remaining oil is more difficult and expensive to produce and refine.
stephen shirmer
Speaking from a swiss perspective concerning renewable energy,throughout the country there is an abundance of hydro produced electricity and wind turbines providing power for villages dotted among the valleys and the alps,
the power grid here is not in private hands, it is state owned and runs at a profit and does not leave people cold within the winter months, the monthly payment here for a large apartmeent is 26 swiss francs a month or £16, there is no fuel poverty allowed here as there is no free market, and this is achieved with a population of 7 million people.
Sandy McMillan
George, The North sea, and the Atlantic on the westside, have that many wells capped it is unbelievable, we dont know how much oil and gas is out there, for starters the Sullom Voe Oil Terminal is about to go through the biggest ever refit it has ever had, does that not tell you some thing, and why is Total building a huge gas plant, dont tell me this work is going on just for the sake of it.
Douglas Young
Small community windfarms have some merit for Shetland, but as Germany has found, large-scale windfarms are bankrupting it’s energy industry. Shetland really needs to look to the sea for base-load generation. Denmark went into wind in a big way-but has still to close a single power station.
John Tulloch
Peak Oil, here we go again, technology will stand still and we won’t be able t oget all this oil out of the ground.
Wasn’t that what they said about shale gas?
The Green River Shale in the US, alone, contains about three times as much oil as the world has ever consumed and the necessary technology is already close to profitable production.
The Bazhenov Shale in Russia contains about two thirds the amount contained in the Green RIver Shale – together about five trillion barrels!.
As I said above, don’t hold your breath waiting for oil to run out.