High Altitude Wind Energy Penalised in UK renewable incentive scheme

High Altitude Wind Misses out in UK Renewables Obligation

'Shock' bulletin, goverment advisors class a brand new renewable technology, accessing a hitherto impossible and incomparably larger resource alongside 120 year old horizontal axis wind turbine technology, that will soon be obsolete.

A source within DECC told me that High Altitude Wind Energy will fall in the 'established technology' band, when it patently is not. Why? Well it seems that the classification is driven by language and not by the criteria that DECC claim to use, which are:

• potential to contribute to penetration of renewbles into the energy mix
  
• underlying cost of generation
• novelty of tech

This is the clear intention of the Renewables Obligation and the Reneable Energy Strategy 2009, so here we have the first renewable tech with the potential to deliver energy cheaper than coal, which desperately needs support in the UK, but wait, it's on shore and it is a wind device, so no, we'll ignore our repeatedly stated criteria, and unlike every other novel system it will be denied the higher funding band.

Yet another opportunity scuppered, yet another own goal for the UK government, hooray for Kafkaesque lunacy....