Mr Harper,
if you're so worried about CO2 emissions, what on earth are you doing burning trees to keep warm? After all, when left alone those trees are absorbing and storing CO2. And studies suggest that wood burning releases more pollution per unit of energy produced than coal. If you want "sustainable" logs then can I suggest that you plant some trees this week and harvest them to burn when you see fit?
The use of words like "renewable", "low carbon", "eco", "environmentally friendly", "sustainable" etc is usually complete BS.
For example: "Sustainable" means able to be maintained at a certain rate. Now years back I saw a new housing development where there weren't houses before, and it had a sign saying "Sustainable development". Now this is untrue because eventually if they continued building such housing either the land surface would run out or the building materials would run out or both. Or did they demolish another older development, return that to grass and re use the materials?
You say "It's about a reduction in emissions in everything we do". You're making colossal assumptions in the capability of "renewables".
Your claim that "Smart meters have nothing to do with the viability of any given energy source." is wrong. Smartenergygb, which was commissioned by govt. to roll out smart meters says this on it's website: "It will help us get the most from variable power sources like wind and solar".
You claim that the disposal of 30,000 turbine blades is a "miniscule" problem. Have you ever driven past one (I have). They're huge, typically c. 75m long. The UK's blades end to end would stretch from London to Athens approx, and that's just one country's blades today. You sound stupid and dogmatic, but I'm sure you're not stupid. You suggest adding them to concrete; the problem with making concrete is that it involves the emission of 180 to 1,100 kg of CO2 per 1,000 kg of concrete depending on process (source: wiki, NRMCA, EPA). The lower part of the range is achieved when fly ash, which is burnt coal from power stations, is added. (Does this mean that CO2 emissions from making concrete in the UK will rise, seeing as the coal power stations are to close by 2025?).
You say that wind turbines have "no emissions, no CO2". Really? When a developer gets planning permission does the wind farm just appear on the hill as if by magic? Doesn't the iron ore need to be dug out of the ground? Doesn't the rock need to be crushed? Doesn't it need to go through a blast furnace? Doesn't it need to be transported from Brazil and Australia to the turbine factories in Germany and Denmark? Don't the finished turbines need to be transported to the wind farm? Doesn't the wind farm need to be constructed? All these stages involve CO2 emissions, just in case you didn't know. Same for the copper, aluminium, concrete etc. (I wonder what % of the energy required for these processes comes from fossil fuel? Could we ever do it without fossil fuel?).
The projection is that the world will have c. 2,000 GW (gigawatts) of wind power capacity by 2050 (source: EIA>wind energy road map targets>ETP Blue Map scenario). That's one million turbines. Wind turbines have lifetime emissions of between 5 and 32 grammes of CO2 per kilowatt hour of electricity produced (source: climatexchangedotorg). So a rough calculation gives between 380 million tonnes and 2.45 billion tonnes of CO2 emitted to deploy these 1 million turbines (assuming a capacity factor of 25% average, turbine lifetime of 17.5 years average). And remember, at the end of the 17.5 years when they need replacing all this is repeated. "Zero emissions" is it?
I notice you don't use any data in your writing, instead you use adjectives like "proven" and "miniscule". Have you EVER researched or calculated anything properly, or do you get your info from the MSM (mainstream media). All the MSM is good for is to be burnt on your tree-burning stove. Try this calculation, using my data of 75 m per turbine blade and 1 million turbines by 2050; if all the blades were to be put end to end how many times would they stretch around the equator? Get back to me.
You claim that energy storage is the solution.
Now a few years back a battery farm was commissioned at Leighton Buzzard (LB) costing £19m, size of 3 tennis courts and can store 10 MWh of electricity. It was described as "The biggest battery in Europe". People like you tell me that batteries are the "game changer". So let's do some more sums. Highly qualified electrical engineers say that in a 100% renewables world we'd need between a week and a month of stored electricity to cover extended low wind/solar periods. Let's go half way and use half a month. The UK consumed 336 TWh (terawatt hours) of electricity in 2016 (source: DUKES). LB stores 0.00001 TWh. Therefore we'd need 1.4 million LBs to stop power shortages, cost £26.6 trillion (trillion = million million), area covered is 322 sq km.
In reality things would be much worse than this. The cost of materials like lithium and cobalt would soar as demand went through the roof for these uncommon minerals. Same for the wages of engineers. They'd need to cover a bigger area as batteries are a major fire hazard and would need good separation. Batteries suffer from energy losses of up to 50% or more so you'd need to at least double the size of your battery park. And it only works if, on the onset of an energy shortage, your batteries are full- what happens if a low wind period is followed by a fairly low wind period and you can't recharge your batteries? And remember, we're only covering electricity here, what about all other energy, like gas heating and transport, diesel and petrol. Electricity is only 17.5% of all UK energy (DUKES). So you'd need to multiply it all again by between 5 and 6. Are you seeing the big picture yet?
You say "it's no secret the wind sometimes doesn't blow".
You're the first pro-wind person to admit this to me. Well done!