everyone knows it’s windy

Es­ti­mated reading time is 2 min­utes.

“CLI­MATE CHANGE FOR THE BETTER” is not a slogan we hear often, if at all. Any silver lining that can be found in the dark cloud of global cli­mate change seems to be ex­ceed­ingly rare. But not non-existent, as wit­ness this head­line: “Off­shore Wind Is on the Brink of Be­coming So Cheap, the UK Will Pay People to Use It” by Dharna Noor for the Giz­modo web­site (“We come from the fu­ture”). The ar­ticle continues:

“The fossil fuel in­dustry and its al­lies love saying that re­new­able en­ergy in­creases utility bills. But in the UK, new re­search shows that coming off­shore wind farms could ac­tu­ally make bills more af­ford­able. In the short term, pre­vious re­new­able en­ergy projects have in­creased bills be­cause they’ve been built with gov­ern­ment subsidies.

But a study pub­lished in Na­ture En­ergy on Monday found that the country’s latest ap­proved off­shore wind projects will be built so cheaply that they’ll ac­tu­ally be able to pay money back to the UK gov­ern­ment. That money will go to­wards re­ducing house­hold en­ergy bills.”

Ac­cording to Malte Jansen, a re­search as­so­ciate at the Centre for En­vi­ron­mental Policy at Im­pe­rial Col­lege London, “En­ergy sub­si­dies used to push up en­ergy bills, but within a few years, cheap re­new­able en­ergy will see them brought down for the first time. This is an as­ton­ishing de­vel­op­ment.”

To read the ar­ticle in its en­tirety, click HERE.

Britain’s off­shore wind projects will be built so cheaply that they’ll ac­tu­ally be able to pay money back to the UK gov­ern­ment. This is an as­ton­ishing de­vel­op­ment! Click To Tweet

GCC OffshoreWindTurbines UK 1000

FEA­TURED IMAGE: I found this photo ac­com­pa­nying “Tidal Transit Or­ders Third Wind Farm Crew Transfer Vessel” on the Off­shore Wind web­site. I chose it be­cause it has a vaguely science-fictiony look and feel to it. Looking at those gi­gantic three-bladed tur­bines and I ant to hear the creepy, un­set­tling horn-like bellow of the tripods in the 2005 ver­sion of War Of The Worlds.

Fi­nally, the title of this piece, “Everyone Knows It’s Windy,” is a nod to one of the very best sin­gles of 1967, the As­so­ci­a­tion’s Windy: “Who’s trippin’ down the streets of the city, smiling at every­body she sees? Who’s reaching out to cap­ture a mo­ment? Everyone knows it’s Windy!”

Just writing these lyrics and thinking about this record makes me smile at the Windys that I have known in my life. I hope each reader gets to meet (and maybe even know for a few hours) at least one Windy in her and his life . . .

 

Leave a Comment