Filed under: News, GreenTech, Alternative Energy
It’s always humiliating to get called out publicly and shown that you don’t know what you’re talking about (I should know, it happens to me all the time). But it’s got to be doubly humiliating to the supposed experts at the British Wind Energy Association. According to the Telegraph, after a review by the Advertising Standards Association, BWEA is being forced to cut their estimate for the carbon emissions each kilowatt hour saves in half. Ouch.
In the US, when promoters talk up a proposed wind farm, they usually parlay the carbon savings in the dumbed-down terms of how many cars worth of carbon it would ‘take off the road.’ Apparently, promoters in the UK relay the information in metric units — how scientific of them, right?
Well, after a review it would appear that half of the carbon savings estimated by the wind energy just went up in a cloud of imaginary smoke. Rather than displacing 860g of carbon per kWh, BWEA has now agreed to advertise only 430g. That means, to reach the government’s goal of displacing 200 million tons of CO2 by 2020, they would need not the 50,000 turbines previously called for, but 100,000 instead.
The figure that the BWEA has been using were based on an old estimate that had compared wind farms to old style coal plants — a figure that had probably been inaccurate since the early 90s, when dirty coal stations were replaced by cleaner burning ones.
The figure had come under fire by wind farm opponents who said that promoters were greatly exaggerating the benefits. Sadly, it turns out that they were. Perhaps the weren’t trying to mislead anyone, but it appears they have. Sad day for the UK wind industry.
[via Earth2Tech]
UK Wind Industry Cuts Carbon Savings Estimate by Half originally appeared on Green Daily on Tue, 23 Dec 2008 13:00:00 EST 0. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
