Post by @urlyman@mastodon.social

There’s an aspect of offshore wind that’s continuity with oil and gas. Massive, incredibly expensive engineering that’s distant enough from the communities it serves to prolong our sensibility that power is just magically ‘on tap’

https://mastodon.social/@urlyman/116601657082071707

Jonathan Schofield

@urlyman@mastodon.social · 19 hours ago

…Those 129 wind turbines – perhaps a quarter or more of the way into their optimal life as rebuildables – are now part of tens of thousands of “AI-detected” structures mapped at https://mapscaping.com/offshore-wind-farm-map/#lat=55.0201&lng=2.6477&z=9&conf=high%2Cmedium%2Clow.

There are close to 3,000 such turbines operational off the UK coast now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_offshore_wind_farms_in_the_United_Kingdom#Map_of_the_UK_offshore_wind_farms

Here are the ones in the eastern half of the UK. Around 1,600 of them are in international waters

Jonathan Schofield

@urlyman@mastodon.social · 3 hours ago

…Now that we’ve built it, I’m glad it exists. But it’s the wrong strategy for a more variable and more uncertain future.

Up-slope engineering for the make number go up mindset

Simon Brooke

@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot · 3 hours ago

@urlyman H'mmm... our offshore wind farm is visible from pretty much everywhere in the parish. It generates revenue of about £10,000 per hour, every hour. But not for us, we get none of that. Even the electricity connection from it goes to England, not here (which makes sense, we're energy rich, England isn't, but...)

I think offshore wind is good technology, you get much more laminar windflows and higher wind speed in open water. But if the people most affected are excluded, that's not good.

Simon Brooke

@simon_brooke@mastodon.scot · 2 hours ago

@urlyman And saying 'Scotland is energy rich', while true, is not the whole picture. Despite the fact that we have a huge surplus of cheap electricity, much of which we export to England, we are charged more for domestic electricity than England is (Wales is charged still more).

A 'United Kingdom' in which the centre has a settler-colonial relationship with the periphery does not work.

https://www.uswitch.com/gas-electricity/guides/regional-energy-prices/

Jonathan Schofield

@urlyman@mastodon.social · 2 hours ago

@simon_brooke crazy. But par for the fucking course for England

Jonathan Schofield

@urlyman@mastodon.social · 2 hours ago

@simon_brooke Re good technology, I’ll be here in 20 years to have an “I told you so” discussion ;)

But in the meantime the disconnect between where the plant is and where its output goes is a part of both energy blindness continuity and sowing resentment