I'm a Bit Green

 

As you know, I am presently in the UK and travelling always has one comparing apples with oranges when it comes to the differences other countries have with us in Godzone down under.

There have been many.  From the foods in the UK, to the supermarkets, food, cars, housing and prices, interest rates, Pommie habits, restaurants, pubs, governments, transport, weather!, dogs, cyclists … the list can go on. 

However, on this trip one of the standout comparisons has been related to green issues.  Farming issues, food supply issues, recycling issues, pollutions issues, vegetarian/vegan/carnivorous issues – and general air-that-we-breath environmental issues.

Any topic of environment is an enormous topic – with hundreds of sub-topics – far, far too many for this mere minion to spout views on.  But for today’s purpose I want to share with you my thoughts on just one aspect that has taken my focus for the almost four decades I have travelled here.

That’s renewable energy.

Yes, it sounds a boring topic.  And it is.  But too bad.

You see, in 1985 I visited North Wales for the first time and when my hosts took me walking to the top of a beautiful Welsh hill range to see the view they had long ago boasted of – their village nestled on the coast line of the North Sea in the Atlantic – we reached the summit look out point and I looked out seaward to take in the glorious vista of the Welsh coastline.

Well, what should have been glorious vista was blotted by the sight of oil rigs – rigs way out there on the ocean horizon.  Great big, smoke billowing structures.  It horrified me.  Yet to my UK friends oil rigs on the ocean’s horizon had been the norm for some decades, they didn’t ever notice them.  Besides, I was in Wales after all, the country of slate and coal mines where environments had been massacred for centuries.  They were somewhat surprised at my naïve reaction to seeing only the rigs and not the beauty of the coastline.

Twenty years later in the early 2000s I walked up the same hills to the same view and was confronted not by the oil rigs I was expecting to see but by the insane ugliness of ocean installed wind turbines - mile upon mile upon mile of wind turbines sitting out in that North Sea.  Neat rows and rows of them – perpendicular rows – parallel rows – this way – and that way.  Row upon row.  Mile upon mile.

Visual graffiti – on our natural world.

Now, I know the world has to look at alternative options of resources.  And I know that wind turbines are now infiltrating our own eco systems in various parts of New Zealand – one trip from Palmerston North to Wellington educates one on that - and I know that to environmentalists and even those not really into the environmental med-care see turbines as a ‘reasonable’ alternative to the environmental issues that coal and gas burning is doing to New Zealand ozone and to the global warming issues of the world.

But no matter how much I try to analyse it I cannot accept the ugliness, the environmental noise and the environmental impact these power source structures are giving us.

Then last week I took a train journey from the north of England to London.  It’s a journey I have done many, many times over the years – and have loved.  The train (electric) is fast, efficient and takes one through glorious English countryside – looking out the train window one is treated to views of pastoral England, of canals with their pretty canal boats channelling through the many locks.  One enjoys the quick glimpses of the pretty and historic villages, the castles, the rolling hills with three- to four-hundred-year-old stone walls.

And now, that same countryside has great big, ugly wind turbines on the hillside horizons, for mile after mile.  And added to that – on the fields below are acre upon acre …  of solar panels.  All low lying to the ground.  Hundreds of metres long, row after row after row – field after field after field of them.

Not quite the visual pollution of the wind turbines, but certainly green spaces taking up valuable land space that now cannot have any other use.

Yes – outwardly it seems the UK is doing its bit toward greenhouse gases by installing these power generating mechanisms.  But.  At what cost? 

I wanted to learn that turbines and solar panel had nothing but positive outcomes for all that would far outweigh my negative attitude towards them.

Greatest thoughts to me was that if one had to have such ugly structures on the landscapes why not build them so many miles out to sea that the public did not have them in eyeshot?

Since first seeing the oil rigs those decades ago, and then latterly the wind turbines, and learning of oil rigs and turbines in New Zealand my interest in them escalated substantially.  I recall researching wind turbine information in the British papers on subsequent visits here and collected quite a bit of information that the average person would never have been told about them.  Some good and some not so good – dependent on who wrote the articles and for whom.  One interesting fact was that British farmers were receiving government funded subsidies in the 80’s, 90’s and early 2000’s for each turbine on their land.  At one point a large turbine was returning up to 40,000 British pounds per turbine to a farmer.  Subsidies are not a factor today – but no need to as the farmers made their fortunes in those early turbine days.

Nowadays the farmers do receive rental payments for the land the turbines sit on. 

As is the case with solar panel fields.  Farmers receive a substantial rental fee from the UK government for the area usage that solar paneling takes. 

Easier life for the farmers than the daily chore of going out early mornings to round up and milk the cows.

Other factors that stand out: One ocean bound wind turbine requires 900 tons of steel, 2,500 tons of concrete and 45 tons of nonrecyclable plastic.  Google it.  I have.  Steel and concrete and nonrecyclable plastics that are sourced, made, manufactured somewhere in the world – in foundries that burn gases and oils for manufacturing; slave labour – particularly for any lithium that are often used in solar panels (but that’s another topic all together!).

Wind turbines, have a life span of 20 to 25 years.  That steel, that concrete that nonrecylable plastics – what happens to it?  It’s dismantled and whilst the steel can be recycled a great amount of it is taken to … land fill.  And EVERY blade on a wind turbine is NON recyclable as it is made up with resin/plastic componentry rendering them totally unreusable.

I found a great BBC article yesterday showing photos of a wind turbine blade grave yard.  Huge, huge, deep, deep landfills.

And solar power panels.  What is their life span?  25 years.  So all these fields of panels I saw on my train trip will have to be disposed of in 25 years.  Can they be reused?  No.  It will all go to landfill.

There are toxic materials inside the solar cells.  It is cheaper for suppliers to discard them in landfills.  Where their toxic metals can leech out into the environment.

Look – I’m being very general in my comments – but rest assured, I have sat for hours over the years and especially these past few days reading various articles on the positive and negatives of both wind turbines and solar cells – but despite all the varying views from the manufacturers, the green environmentalists, the politicians, the marketers – there is no way of denying there is – OR WILL be major issues when it comes to disposal of these products – the very things that are manufactured to save our environment.

I am placated to some degree that we in New Zealand have hydro damns and geothermal resources that we are still developing.  Long may they continue.  But our country is going enthusiastically down the line of wind turbines and solar.

Of course, nuclear is the one power resource many of the Brits and Americans say we will have to eventually succumb to.  That sends me off on another tangent altogether. 

Britain has 11 operational nuclear reactors – supplying Brits with power – it churns my insides out.  May it never be a New Zealand option.

And the end product of nuclear radioactive waste – goes to landfill!

I’m not professing to have any solutions – if I did I’d be a multi-billionaire – but us switching to these renewable energy resources is not as simple as many are making it out to be.  Often quite the opposite.  There is a cost.

I am quite concerned a good number of Kiwis are not aware of these simple facts.  Support alternative options of power source, but don’t do it without educating oneself on all the pros and cons. 

Even if a little research has one or two rethink their own power needs - maybe if it stops one person of complaining about cyclists getting on bikes and riding to work instead of driving.  Maybe if one or two more people cycled or walked instead of driving that motor car – gas fueled or electric.  If some got rid of the electric heated that spa pool, spend less time on that play station, pc or motor boat.  Hang the washing out on a line instead of using the dryer.

 

And think – if someone rode their bicycle twice – it would count as recycling.

 

We all have to do our bit for the environment. And there are many ways we can save energy.  Lately I’ve been using the couch.