Mr Lawson

You make the statement in your article "As for the actual savings in carbon achieved by renewables, there are virtually no reliable estimates from operating grids." And in your recent post "no-one has yet shown that wind energy saves carbon when connected to a network".

I repeat the Danish Report, Wind Energy The Case for Denmark (which you refer to extensively in your article) says on page 2 of the executive summary that "Wind energy has replaced some thermal generation in Denmark. It has saved an average emission of about 2.4 million t per year CO2." This not only says that carbon is saved, but quantifies it. I have to question whether you actually read the report?

Why is it that greenies can never accept facts? Could it be because the facts always show the errors in their thinking?

It is now common knowledge that the Danes have shot themselves in the foot, with their wind power.

When the wind doesn't blow, they have to buy their power fron nuclear France. Luck they have a sensible neighbour. Worse still, when it does blow, they still have to buy their power from France, because the wind power stuffs up their grid. Even worse, they have to sell the the wind power to Sweden, for less than a quarter of the cost to generate the stuff, & much less than they have to pay smart France for their power.

Took some real greenie thinking to get it that wrong.

Spain is another that went sprinting off down that blind alley of green jobs, & clean power. Like some dumb bloke here wanted us to do, they were going to lead the world. Well they just missed. Greece just beat them to it, into bankruptsy that is.

They had a few of their academics investigate what went wrong with the great utopian dream, just recently.

Well it seems that giong green is expensive, damn expensive. Every green job generated has cost $137,000 each PA in subsidies. Then it gets worse. That green power is so expensive they are loosing real jobs, quickly. You know the ones, those that the tax payer don't have to pay huge subsidies to get.

So those green jobs cost $137,000, plus 2 real jobs, for each pretend job generated, & don't bother to excuse the pun.

For heaven's sake you blokes, wake up, do a bit of reading, & stop talking rubbish, & get with the facts.

'When the wind doesn't blow, they have to buy their power fron nuclear France. Luck they have a sensible neighbour. Worse still, when it does blow, they still have to buy their power from France, because the wind power stuffs up their grid. Even worse, they have to sell the the wind power to Sweden, for less than a quarter of the cost to generate the stuff, & much less than they have to pay smart France for their power.'

Thanks Hasbeen for showing how idiotic Green's policy is. The problem is that we are so prosperous as a nation due to mining that most of the electorate don't give a stuff about how much money the Government wastes in order to keep the Greens vote. The irony is that the Greens would be the first to scream if they were not allowed to fly around the world in jets preaching their religion to others at tax payer expense .

Mark Lawson here
Spindoc - thanks for the note.. saved it

Loxton - I wrote the first comment before I had seen your post. The points you raised are simply irrelevent. If we worried about the political origin or funding of reports then all the green reports would go out first as hopelessly biased. But of course we judge them on their contents. You complain that because the Danish report has been funded by supposedly sinister conservative forces - I note you don't even comment on the German report which says the same things - then my contention that there have been no reliable estimates of carbon savings from wind must somehow be invalid. Neither the Danish nor German report goes near the issue. Both simply assume that there have been savings. The figures you quote are from assumptions. There has been no attempt by them or the grid managers to work it out properly and publish the result.
In fact, for the Danish grid, as the article makes clear, there may well be savings, at immense cost, for obvious local reasons set out in the report and the article, (dams in other countries). But those savings are likely to be considerably reduced due to reserve and retailoring requirements, not considered in the report. Ergo no reliable estimates. In any case, they don't attempt to estimate it, they assume it. The condition that may have led to partially savings in Denmark do not exist in Australia. The case against wind power is overwhelming.

Maybe some of you (Lawson included) would be interested in reading this article:

"Wind's latest problem: it . . . makes power too cheap"
by Jerome a Paris

http://www.energybulletin.net/node/52665

A quote from the article:

"The key thing here is that we are beginning to unveil what I've labelled the dirty secret of wind: utilities don't like wind not because it's not competitive, but because it brings prices down for their existing assets, thus lowering their revenues and their profits. Thus the permanent propaganda campaign against wind. But now that this "secret" is out in the open, it's hopefully going to make one of the traditional arguments against wind (the one about its supposed need subsidies) much more difficult to use... The argument remains true for solar, and to a lesser extent for offshore wind, but the utilities are going to complain much less about offshore wind given that they are investing so much capital in that sector right now. The reality is that wind power brings prices down for consumers, even taking into account the cost of feed-in tariffs or other regulatory support mechanisms, which means that these regulatory schemes are not subsidies, but rather smart corrections of market inefficiencies for the public good."

And you believe that la la land stuff Michael?

Wow.