Wind power on the Daily Politics with Caroline Lucas, James Delingpole and Ken Livingstone – Transcripted
Daily Politics Show – BBC2 – 12pm – 1st November 2012
Following two front page articles yesterday in the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph reporting energy minister John Hayes’s comments about wind farms – see here for more – the BBC’s Daily Politics show today had green MP Caroline Lucas, climate skeptic blogger and anti-windfarm campaigner James Delingpole and former Mayor of London Ken Livingstone on to discuss the issue.
Here’s a transcript – it should be accurate, but check against delivery here when it goes up.
Andrew Neil – Show host
Caroline Lucas – Green party MP
James Delingpole – Climate change skeptic and writer
Ken Livingstone – Former Mayor of London
This first section refers to video footage from House of Commons:
Caroline Flint MP – “[Last time I spoke to Ed Davey] I asked the secretary of state why he was failing to stand up to his Conservative colleagues who want to kill off the British wind industry. He said, and I quote, “I have to disappoint the right honorable lady but my Conservative colleagues and I are working very closely on this matter”. That was of course with the former energy minister. After the honorable member for south Holland and Deepings outburst yesterday, how closely would he say they’re working together now”
Ed Davey MP – “Well my honorable friend suggests I used the word intimately, but I can say we are working very closely. Listen Mr Speaker, my honorable friend the Minister for Energy, he and I may occasionally disagree on matters of substance, and I certainly didn’t agree with his remarks the other day. But I have to say, I really admire his style.”
Back to studio
Neil – So, any clearer? No, not me either. Anyway joining me now the Green MP Caroline Lucas and James Delingpole, the climate change skeptic and author who until recently was standing as an anti-wind farm candidate in the Corby by-election. But you’ve pulled out on the basis that you’ve won, is this true?
Delingpole – Absolutely I think that it’s the shortest and most successful election campaign of all time. I’ve achieved all my aims.
Neil – You haven’t won.
Delingpole – I was in it not for the tawdry bauble of, oh, a place in parliament. What I wanted was something much more important, I wanted to rescue the british countryside from the wind menace.
Neil – Well how have you managed to do that. There are 2600 wind turbines already completed and running onshore, not off, and another 3000 waiting for approval.
Delingpole – I can’t do anything about the ones that are already in place, unfortunately. Although I hope that a bit of semtex in future years will sort out that problem. In the meantime what I think I have achieved…
Neil – James Delingpole the terrorist?
Delingpole – Well I don’t have the expertise to destroy these things, but somebody does.
Neil – What about the 3000 – we’re gonna build a lot more? According to figures…
Delingpole – Particularly in your native land, I mean Scotland is being ruined…
Neil – What, South Kensington?
Delingpole – Well, OK, the land of your forefathers is being destroyed by windfarms, and it’s a tragedy.
Neil – I’m not arguing the rights and wrongs of wind power, I’m just trying to work out how on earth you can claim you’ve won when there’s another 3000 coming down the pike?
Delingpole – You know, you’ve gotta start somewhere, softly softly catchy monkey. I think this is a remarkable turnaround in government policy.
Neil – But its really confusing depending on who you listen to, and it’s another example of the coalition on an important subject being all over the place on this. Is there now going to be a drag on onshore wind, or will there be no more or very few more, or more turbines going up?
Lucas – Well I think you’re right – the complete chaos in the coalition yet again. And that matters actually because it gives a signal out to investors that Britain isn’t serious about investing in the green economy. And my worry is that James Delingpole’s semtex is actually going to be aimed at cheaper fuel bills, it’s going to be aimed at jobs, it’s going to be aimed at a booming green economy that we could have – if people like James didn’t keep running down the green economy, and coming out with frankly completely unscientific statements. It’s very entertaining, but it’s not actually very helpful.
Delingpole – I’m really surprised that Caroline’s defending wind farms. I mean you couldn’t get anything more anti-green than a wind turbine. They kill birds and bats, they drive up energy prices, they’re incredibly inefficient, and they don’t even save CO2. They actually increase CO2. They’re so unreliable – wind being wind, that they require 100% backup by fossil fuel power on spinning reserve. What you get is two forms of electricity being generated at the same time. It’s a disaster.
Lucas – That’s a perfect case in point of what i’m saying. James is very entertaining but completely lacking in any factual grounding whatsoever. First of all, you don’t need 100 per cent back up. Second of all, all energy generation needs some back up. Third, if we had interconnectors as we’re now beginning to do to the rest of europe, it means that when it’s not windy in Britain we can make the most of when it is windy in other parts of europe. What’s really driving…
Neil – But that’s a big job though, that’s a huge investment – these interconnectors…
Lucas – Well it’s a lot less investment than a massive new fleet of nuclear power stations. I mean what James doesn’t say is the kind of energy that he does want…
Delingpole – Do you not care about the countryside at all, Caroline?
Lucas – I do and that’s why I want to challenge you on this…
Livingstone – I mean Britain more than almost anywhere else in Europe is the best site for wind farms because of the nature of our climate. I personally quite like them, I think they’re quite attractive. It’s a lot cheaper to put them on land than the put them in the sea…
Delingpole – What about in your garden then Ken?
Livingstone – They look great. And I’ve got my photovoltaic cells and everything else. The simple fact is we either get on top of our carbon emissions and bring them down or we may not have a human civilisation by the end of this century. We’ve just seen this devastation in North America, in an election campaign where neither main candidate has mentioned climate change. When I was a kid…
Neil – Are you claiming that hurricanes are a result of climate change?
Livingstone – You can’t say about any one instance. But when I was a kid, about once or twice a decade there’d be some catastrophic weather event. Now we’re getting a couple every year now. And this is with just an increase in temperature of under one degree. We heading for three or four…
Delingpole – Ken, this is just junk science that you’ve read – a few selected sites on the internet…
Livingstone – Every serious… there is no serious scientist i’m aware of, who specialises in climate change who’s a skeptic…
Lucas – Can I just say that the key thing is not how much science I know, or how much science you know or Ken. IT’s about the majority of scientific opinion…
Delingpole – No it’s not.
Lucas – …now when you’ve got the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which is hundreds and hundreds of scientists, I put it to people watching this program, would they like to listen to James Delingpole on this or the bulk of the mass of scientists? I think most people would accept…
Delingpole – The wind industry is the south sea bubble of our time, and in ten years time…
Neil – Just a little test here to see who’s well informed. There are 3300 onshore wind turbines already up and running in the UK and 700 offshore, you’re right they’re more expensive to put in and that’s why there’s fewer at the moment but there are plans for more. So by my arithmia there are about 4000 turbines currently turning in the UK and it’s waters. This morning, how much electricity were they producing as a percentage of the total amount?
Lucas – I can’t do the maths well enough but I can tell you that a modern turbine will produce enough electricity for 1000 homes, so if you give me a pen I’ll try to work it out.
Neil – But as a percentage, what do you say?
Delingpole – I reckon it’s less than five per cent
Neil – What do you think?
Livingstone – I think it’s probably less than five per cent. But we’re just beginning…
Neil – Well hold on, let me give you the answer – it’s three per cent.
Delingpole – For all that damage…
Neil – Now if 4000 turbines produced only three per cent of our electricity this morning, then… we have a target I think of over 30% of electricity by 2020, which is only eight years away, you’re gonna need a hell of a lot of turbines.
Lucas – But no one is suggesting that we’re going to do it all by wind turbines. What we’re going to do is use a whole range of different renewable technologies and, crucially, energy efficiency. Energy efficiency is the Cinderella of this debate. According to the government’s own figures we could save 40 per cent of the energy we use today…
Neil – But energy efficiency doesn’t change the percentages of where the electricity is coming from. And on the government’s plan, the DECC plan, most of the getting the renewables up to a third of our total electricity, most of that does come from wind power – that’s in the plan
Livingstone – the biggest way of coping with all this problem is you insulate your home properly. Last summer I had mine done – immediately our electricity bill went down. Our gas went down…
Neil – You could just wear a jumper…
Livingstone – Yeah that’d work. No this insulation really works.
Lucas – Look at Germany and Denmark – big economies that are really successful they are depending on far more wind than we are without any problem . So I don’t want James to take us back to the stone age…
Delingpole – Last time we were on the show Caroline you admitted to being a watermelon
Lucas – I don’t know why we need to go back to that…
– Lots of talking over each other in which no words are discernable –
Neil – â?¦ now, just briefly before we move on, in a sentence what is government policy on onshore wind now?
Delingpole – I think they’ve had a massive u-turn and Ed Davey just doesn’t want to admit it.
Neil – That’s not apparent is it?
Lucas – It’s completely chaotic. I hope very much that James isn’t right but if he is then it’s very bad news for the British economy and very bad news for your fuel bills…
Delingpole – …and the bats?
Lucas -… and the fuel bills, it’s very bad news
Neil – If it is, we’ll have a bat back and the two of you as well.