On a frigid January morning, the fruit of the U.K.’s overreliance on wind energy was reaped when its contribution to the national grid plummeted to a pitiful zero.  Solar output, meanwhile, was a paltry 1% of power generation.

This wasn’t just a fluke, but rather a stark illustration of the dangers of building an energy system around inherently unreliable sources like wind and solar.  The British government’s gamble on wind energy to meet aggressive and unattainable net-zero targets is leading toward an energy crisis of unprecedented proportions.

The Volatility of Wind Energy

Wind power’s appeal has always been its promise of environmentally clean, inexhaustible energy.  But real-world experience shows the technology to be damaging to ecosystems and unreliable.  Although Earth will always have wind, knowing when and how much is as impossible as the foolish pursuit of controlling the climate.

As the monthly production chart from GridWatch demonstrates, wind energy swings wildly from nearly 100% of the output to complete collapse within days or even hours.  This winter, as a very cold high-pressure system settled over the U.K., wind turbines went idle just when demand for heating and electricity surged.

January’s failure forced the U.K. to rely heavily on gas-fired power plants and electricity imports from the continent.  During these periods, the high cost of imported power inflates energy bills that are already among the highest in Europe.

British households, on average, pay nearly double the electricity rates of their mostly nuclear-powered French counterparts.  This disparity is largely due to British policies that subsidize renewable energy while penalizing more reliable fossil fuel-based generation.

Paying to Stop the Wind

Adding insult to injury, the U.K.’s energy policies include a perverse mechanism: compensating wind turbine operators to switch off the machines during periods of high wind.  On January 24, as Storm Eowyn battered Ireland and Scotland with gusts exceeding 100 miles per hour.  Such high winds require some turbines to be idled to prevent grid overload and mechanical damage.

“Consumers face a triple hit in constraint costs at times of high winds,” says Lee Moroney of U.K.’s Renewable Energy Forum. “Not only do they pay for electricity that wind farms predicted they would generate but were instructed not to because of grid congestion, but they also have to pay a bonus to the wind farms for the trouble of reducing output. And they must also pay for the costs of turning up conventional generation (such as gas-fired power stations] to make up the shortfall.”

The U.K.’s dwindling domestic gas production and reliance on imports mean that fluctuations in wholesale gas prices hit consumers hard. In 2024, energy bills skyrocketed by 80% compared to 2019 levels, a trend that shows no signs of abating. These costs are exacerbated by government-mandated levies to fund “renewable” energy projects and carbon offset schemes.

The branding of wind energy as a green solution is false advertising in the extreme:

• Manufacturing turbines requires vast amounts of fossil fuels – from mining and processing rare earth minerals to producing the steel and concrete for their massive structures.
• The amount of land required for a turbine to produce comparable amounts of energy is many times that of nuclear and fossil fuels.
• Extraction of rare earths, essential for turbine magnets, is associated with severe environmental degradation and human rights abuses in mining regions.
• Wind turbines kill wildlife, especially birds and bats, and are suspected to contribute to whale deaths in offshore locations.
• Wind turbine blades become non-recyclable waste that often goes to landfills.

Citizens of the U.K. have missed serious power blackouts by a whisker.  But recent events highlight the dangers of prioritizing ideology over practicality and serve as a warning to those who would allow climate dogma to guide energy policies.

Vijay Jayaraj is a Science and Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Fairfax, Virginia. He holds an M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia and a postgraduate degree in energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a bachelor’s in engineering from Anna University, India.

Image: max_gloin via Pixabay, Pixabay License.