Does producing energy from windfarms cost more than gas, coal or nuclear?
Onshore wind energy is actually one of the cheapest of the renewable energy technologies especially when you consider the environmental costs. Energy from the wind is likely to become even cheaper in the future as the technology develops and lets not forget that the wind is free. In October 2009, OFGEM, the UK energy regulator, published major research (Project Discovery – Energy Market Scenarios) examining four possible energy scenarios to 2020. They concluded that in the longer term electricity prices must increase in real terms, due to our ever increasing reliance upon imported gas from eastern Europe and Russia. But they found that a strategy to develop low carbon forms of generation (a balanced mix of nuclear and renewables) not only helped to tackle climate change, but was by far the cheapest option for UK consumers – in fact reducing increases by 2/3rds compared with a “dash for energy”.
