Green Energy Scams in the UK

For progressives and liberals, “green energy” is a rallying cry that until now has been mostly unstoppable public relations-wise in the battle against the causes of so-called “climate change.” However, along the way of adopting green energy policies, a vast array of crooks, con artists and liars has come out of the woodwork to scam governments on a local, state and federal level.

Examination of what’s been happening in Great Britain and Ireland recently should give Americans some pause since many of the same schemes may likely be attempted on some scale here in the United States.

In the UK’s Wales, for instance, a company called Tidal Energy was set up to harness the tidal power of the ocean via a “Deltastream array.” The plan was to power some 10,000 homes via the natural ebb and flow of the sea — free power, in theory. The Welsh government poured 500,000 British pounds into the project while the European Union put 8 million pounds into the scheme. The company went belly up after just three months of operating.

Like the product of failed solar ventures Solyndra and Abengoa in the United States, Tidal Energy’s power was both expensive and unreliable. As soon as government subsidies for these companies dried up, they went bankrupt. But the public isn’t supposed to mind the losses because the intentions of the companies were good, right?

In Northern Ireland, the British government decided to use a Renewable Heat Incentive (RHI) to subsidize businesses at the rate of 160 pounds for every 100 pounds they spent on renewable fuels such as biomass wood pellets. Over time, of course, with money like that available, businesses rushed to scoop up the government’s handouts.

A report in the British Sunday Times newspaper said that many companies went out and bought biomass boilers solely to collect the subsidy. A whistleblower alleged that one entrepreneur stood to make a million pounds over the course of 20 years by using such a boiler to heat an empty structure while others chose to heat their empty factories.

The auditor general for the territory said the RHI had “serious systemic weaknesses from the start” due to a lack of spending controls and that the scheme was inherently vulnerable to fraud and abuse. British taxpayers are already on the hook for over a billion pounds for the plan. Northern Ireland’s first minister Arlene Foster called the RHI scheme “a debacle.”

Another renewable source of energy that the British government thought it would be a bright idea to subsidize with RHI money was anaerobic digestion — a method of turning waste crops into methane gas that can be burned as fuel. As with the Irish biomass scheme, wise farmers in West Sussex, England caught on to the idea of getting free money from the government, so many of them started raising crops specifically for the machines that used this process.

A British government report on anaerobic digestion declared it “not a cost-effective means of biomethane production” since it cost three and one-half times as much to make methane this way as it does to extract it from the Earth.

In addition, the anaerobic digestion plants that make the gas are high polluters due to extra traffic (a single British plant was calculated to produce 12,792 “vehicle movements” per year) and leaks that can cause explosions, like one that occurred at the Harper Adams Agricultural College in the British county of Shropshire in 2015.

In Banter, Ireland, it appears that seven families are about to win a multimillion-Euro out-of-court settlement against a German wind turbine manufacturer. This was after it was shown that they were injured by the low-frequency noise and infrasound produced by the massive machines sited close to their homes. The scandal had been simmering for years.

The renewable energy industry has powerful vested interests and covered its tracks with lavishly funded propaganda, gagging clauses in contracts and threatening legal letters. But this case will likely set a precedent for legal action in other countries, and it’s possible that class-action lawsuits in the U.S. against turbine companies could become commonplace. Some observers are going so far as to say it may be worthwhile to short-sell the stocks of many of these companies.

In mid-Wales, some 600 square miles of an area called the Radnor Hills is being threatened by the proposed construction of a massive wind turbine development. This is being done with no environmental impact assessment in order to expand alternative energy generation for the area from less than 50 megawatts to more than 600 megawatts.

Some of the tallest wind turbines in the world would feed the local power grid and would require access roads to be built to each turbine. The turbines’ concrete footings — each more than 50 feet deep — would have serious long-term consequences for the area’s water table.

The above are just some examples of green energy boondoggles in the English Isles today; there are certainly others. Conservatives are absolutely right to question green energy schemes and profiteering in the United States. As these examples show, saving money through these kinds of proposals and constructions is often more wishful thinking than practical solutions.

~ American Liberty Report


Most Popular

These content links are provided by Content.ad. Both Content.ad and the web site upon which the links are displayed may receive compensation when readers click on these links. Some of the content you are redirected to may be sponsored content. View our privacy policy here.

To learn how you can use Content.ad to drive visitors to your content or add this service to your site, please contact us at [email protected].

Family-Friendly Content

Website owners select the type of content that appears in our units. However, if you would like to ensure that Content.ad always displays family-friendly content on this device, regardless of what site you are on, check the option below. Learn More



Most Popular
Sponsored Content

These content links are provided by Content.ad. Both Content.ad and the web site upon which the links are displayed may receive compensation when readers click on these links. Some of the content you are redirected to may be sponsored content. View our privacy policy here.

To learn how you can use Content.ad to drive visitors to your content or add this service to your site, please contact us at [email protected].

Family-Friendly Content

Website owners select the type of content that appears in our units. However, if you would like to ensure that Content.ad always displays family-friendly content on this device, regardless of what site you are on, check the option below. Learn More