From his biography: "Pat Swords is a Fellow of the Institute of Chemical Engineers and a Chartered Environmentalist"
Can somebody tell me what a "Chartered Environmentalist" is?
As far as I understand the Aarhus Agreement it is meant to keep locals more involved in the development, e.g. give them a say when it comes to windfarms in their area. This is taken care of. But the AA has not been designed to force referenda on each European intergovernmental agreement on carbon reductions. That is a matter of our elected representatives, the government.
Pat Swords is trying to sell himself as a (chartered) environmentalist. On the other hand he is following the long ago debunked climate change denial version by McIntyre and McKitrick about the "hockey stick" graph and claims that the "IPCC had ‘sexed up’ global warming to the point of falsifying their output". This is quite rubbish and not confirmed by any other peer reviewed study.
Also, without any explanation and proof, he claims that "to save the planet about €10 million per annum in environmental damage related to slightly warmer temperatures, we are undergoing a capital investment of over €30 billion which has already added €0.5 billion per annum to our electricity bills and will result as an extra €3 billion per annum". This is not only nonsense (An extra €3 billion per annum would mean the electricity bill of an average household would rise by about €2,000 every year. Have we seen that? Of course not!) . He does also not deliver a single source for his claim and his weird numbers. [*]
The Eirgrid study, Impact of Wind Generation on Wholesale Electricity Costs, tells us a different story:
"Key Messages
• The wind generation expected in 2011 will reduce Ireland’s wholesale market cost of electricity by around €74 million.
• This reduction in the wholesale market cost of electricity is approximately equivalent to the sum of Public Service Obligation (PSO) costs, estimated as €50 million, and the increased constraint costs incurred, due to wind in 2011.
• The total cost of generation is the sum of the wholesale cost of electricity, the PSO cost of wind and the dispatch constraint costs. The total cost does not increase with the inclusion of the 2011 wind capacity."
Can it be any clearer? Wind energy is already paying off its higher capital costs by fuel savings. Not to forget that PSO levies also pay for peat burning which has a bigger carbon footprint than burning coal.
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Here another interesting article about that "heavy hitter", "Pat the Engineer". Enjoy.
=> Green energy advocate challenges ‘fossil fired school of scientists’
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Climate change deniers are coming up with the weirdest claims of the weirdest people.