Green issues or a power failure?

There is so much chatter on social media about the cost of living and in particular the cost of power, gas and electric. It is slowly dawning on me that we are being fed half-truths. For instance we rarely hear about the real cost of power. Few of us know that on all our power bills there is a whopping charge for so-called ‘green’ power. For starters it is not just power we pay for. There are ‘environmental costs’, taxation, network charges just to mention a few. A Guardian news item stated that landowners can receive (‘earn’) £40,000 per annum per 3MegaWatt turbine put on their land! VAT is 20% then wholesale costs, it is all consuming half of the total charges they levy. On top of all that the much hyped CO2 cleanliness of ‘green power’ is a fallacy. For each turbine has to stand on an enormous cast concrete foundation. Concrete is far from environmentally friendly! On top of that the turbines themselves are manufactured with plastic and metal components hence creating a lot of CO2 in their manufacture. Solar panels as well, just look it up on the Internet!

It is the same with electric cars, the batteries are made using lithium, it never occurs freely in nature, but only in compounds. It is present in ocean water and is commonly obtained from brines. Lithium metal is isolated from a mixture of lithium chloride and potassium chloride. The power used to ‘make’ lithium batteries negates its ‘green’ credentials. Furthermore they are highly unstable. Quite the opposite view if you suffer from a bipolar condition. As lithium is or may be, used in treating that condition. 

It is about time that we get the complete and truthful picture rather than hearing or reading about all the ‘beautiful’ ways we are ‘saving’ the planet when in reality we are just continuing to destroy our habitats. In fact we are being charged inordinate amounts for it as well! Everyone who believes in or is part of the ‘Green’ lobby should know the downbeat issues and acknowledge the negative impact. I think they are fed inaccurate data, and as a result we are indeed changing our power structures but to be ruthlessly frank – they are far from green!