Renewable Energy

Here's a blip I'd been thinking about for a while but it's surprisingly difficult to be in the right place at the right time to get things lined up - anyway I got luck today.

The Nympsfield wind turbine is a local landmark and the first wind turbine that Ecotricity built over 15 years ago. The company has since grown to become a major local employer but it's still the only turbine anywhere near here. Loathed by some, loved by others it generates as much electricity in a year as is used by around 500 homes.

There are plans for more turbines to be built near Stinchcombe in the Severn Vale and these are currently being considered by the local planning authority who, if they go to form, will turn them down like Conservative controlled councils do right across the country. This despite the fact that Gloucestershire is has completely failed to meet the renewable energy targets set for 2010.

But whatever the resistance in the short term it is eventually inevitable that we will generate much of our power from the sun and wind, rivers and sea. Fossil energy will become progressively more expensive over coming years as oil and then gas reserves decline whilst demand from developing nations increases and efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions become more urgent.

In the UK we are likely to have another generation of nuclear power stations - not renewable energy but a lower carbon option. However it now seems likely they'll take even longer to get built and be even more expensive, depending exactly how the disaster in Japan has plays out.

There's also plans for a new nuclear power station at Oldbury, near Stinchcombe where they're resisting the new wind turbine development. There seems to be much less concern about living a couple of miles downwind of a nuclear power station than there is about living in sight of wind turbines.

Maybe there will be a change of heart soon, after all there's evidence of tsunamis coming up the Severn Estuary in the past... but of course that sort of thing couldn't happen here, could it?