Wind

Tuesday

Susie Mesure

An ill wind: Helm, by Sarah Hall, reviewed

To read something by the Cumbria-born Sarah Hall is to enter a dizzying, earthy and often dystopian world where the elements rule and nature is blood red. Her nine previous short story collections and novels straddle life’s peripheries, often scratching at the limits of what it means to be human. ‘Mrs Fox’, one of her best known stories – and one of two for which she has won the BBC Short Story Prize – is a visceral tale about a woman who turns into a fox. In her 2021 novel Burntcoat, a virulent virus made Covid-19 look almost benign. Helm is a different beast again, one she has been working

Saturday

Ross Clark

The problem with onshore wind farms

Remember how David Cameron’s government was going to end Nimbyism by having local communities vote for new housing developments on their doorsteps? That didn’t end so well. Last October, following a shock defeat in the Amersham by-election, the Prime Minister gave up on building more new homes in the shires in favour of reverting to the line of least political resistance: the old favourite of trying to solve the housing shortage by building more new homes on brownfield land in the North. Why, then, does the government think it will be any more successful trying to persuade us to accept wind farms on our doorsteps? Last week’s Energy Security Strategy

Monday

Ross Clark

Are low wind speeds to blame for Britain’s energy crisis?

Why has Britain suddenly been plunged into an energy crisis, with day ahead auction prices for electricity rising to over £400 per MWh, ten times what they were this time last year? The spike in global gas prices caused by economic recovery from Covid has been commented on often enough, as has the failure of Britain to maintain sufficient gas storage reserves – we have closed a large gas storage facility as other countries have been building up theirs’. So, too, we have learned of the failure of many smaller energy companies to hedge the prices of their energy, thus putting them at risk of spikes in wholesale prices. Global