Crown Estates flogging off the Western Solent for wind farms.

[KristiferColumbus]

I understand that George III gave up the income from the Crown Estate circa 1760, in return for an income known as the Civil List. That seems to have been a pretty good deal for Parliament. The current Civil List annual payment is £7.9M (unchanged for 10 years) whilst the Crown Estate income is about £200M.

Members of the royal family now seem to have nothing to do with the Crown Estate. The latter is effectively part of government.

What's the Duchy of Cornwall if it is not a Crown Estate?

 

[glashen]

Nice little diversion but does not address the original point that the Monarchy is above the Law.
I always believed that no body is above the Law.Simply staggering!

The Crown Estates may have claimed to have been above the law in the past, I suspect their chances of getting away with that one are now much reduced. For one thing I believe everyone in this country (including the Queen) is subject to EU law, whether that is a good or bad thing I will leave to you.

 

[Ubergeekian]

The Treasury, The Church, Various Universities & Various Pharmaceutical Companies are the predominant landowners in England.

How much of the seabed do they own between them?

 

[[448]]

When the Crown Estates started levying charges for moorings in the 80s - for which charges, of course, they provide(d) absolutely nothing - various groups tried to challenge them in the courts. They couldn't, because the Queen and therefore the Crown Estates are above the law.

Not quite true. Our sailing club at Isle of Whithorn successfully challenged the Cown Estates over this when we unearthed an ancient document that transferred ownership of the harbour from the Crown to the people of the village. Result - no charges have been levied by the CE or whatever they are called now.
Dave

 

[Ratty1]

They cover their construction costs in a year or so.

Do you have actual numbers to show exactly how the construction costs of windmills are repaid within one year ? This sounds very optimistic. Do you also have any actual numbers on ongoing maintenance costs against benefit ?

 

[webcraft]

Do you have actual numbers to show exactly how the construction costs of windmills are repaid within one year ? This sounds very optimistic. Do you also have any actual numbers on ongoing maintenance costs against benefit ?

I think Ubergeekian is talking about energy costs. (Or carbon cost in newspeak) Wind turbines generate as much power as was used in their manufacture within about eight months. Links to this information have been posted in several previous threads. However, the financial repayment time is longer, between two and six years depending on how you calculate it (subsidies etc).

Still a reasonable cost spread over the life of the machine

You can find all the figures with a bit of googling.

- W

 

[Ubergeekian]

I think Ubergeekian is talking about energy costs.

I looked this up to counter one of the prevalent ill-informed rants in The Lounge. Construction energy costs are repaid within about 8 months for the average turbine and construction financial costs within about twelve.

 

[grumpy_o_g]

I looked this up to counter one of the prevalent ill-informed rants in The Lounge. Construction energy costs are repaid within about 8 months for the average turbine and construction financial costs within about twelve.

I'm not agreeing or dis-agreeing but I would love to know how anyone manages to calculate the total energy costs of any reasonably complex device. You'd need to know how energy was used in the extraction and refinement of any oils in the process, where the raw materials came from, how they extracted, where the assembly of all the items was done, etc. Do we factor in any storage mechanism such as hydro-electric? If so do we include the energy used to build that? Are we double accounting the energy produced by the hydro-electric when that's actually being "produced" by the wind-turbine or whatever?

Likewise the financial costs. Does that include subsidies? How do we know the price of energy in the future? How do we know how much energy that turbine will produce next year? Do the subsidies include a factor for servicing debt? Does the initial cost include a factor for servicing debt? For Nuclear how much is factored in for decommissioning?

I don't believe we can accurately produce these costs for either wind farms, nuclear or conventional.

 

[Seven Spades]

I understand that George III gave up the income from the Crown Estate circa 1760, in return for an income known as the Civil List. That seems to have been a pretty good deal for Parliament. The current Civil List annual payment is £7.9M (unchanged for 10 years) whilst the Crown Estate income is about £200M.

Members of the royal family now seem to have nothing to do with the Crown Estate. The latter is effectively part of government.

I believe that part of the deal was that the Monarch was exempt from tax. Having swept away that privilege I expect the next Monarch not to take up the Governments kind offer of a civil list and to just retain the income from Crown Estates albeit taxed.

 

[antisbarr]

Rise in poulation!!!!!

Until we come to understand that population expansion lies at the bottom of all environmental problems, and do something to limit the population growth, it makes not a scrap of difference what measures you take to produce extra electricity. The government cheerfully announces that the UK population will rise by 10 million or more over the next 20 years. How much electricity will THAT use??

This rise in poulation wont use any electricity......it's done by a very natural process!!!!!!!!! And usually done in the dark.

 

[Seven Spades]

It's going to be worth it.

It's official we could get as much as 2% of our energy from wind farms.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/01/11/new_offshore_licences_issued/