Examination of Witnesses (Questions 18
- 19)
TUESDAY 6 MAY 2008
Professor AbuBakr Bahaj, Professor Tony Bridgwater
and Dr Simon Watson University and DR
SIMON WATSON,
Loughborough University, examined.
Q18 Chairman:
Good afternoon, welcome to you all. Thank you for coming to talk
to us this afternoon and for giving up your time. I do not know
if you want to say anything by way of an introduction. If you
do, then speak now; if not we will go straight into questions.
Let me ask the first question which is, taking wind power first
could you comment on how much electricity a typical wind turbine
in Britain would generate?
Dr Watson: I guess at the present time
the sort of wind turbines that are being installed, particularly
onshore but also offshore, are around about two megawatts of rated
power output. Typically you can expect that the average power
that one would produce if you looked over the period of, say,
a year, would be around about 600 kilowatts, so it is about 30
per cent capacity factor. That would give you around about 5,000
to 5,200 megawatt hours per year. To put that into some sort of
perspective, that is enough to supply something in the order of
1,600 households.
Q19 Lord Lawson:
You were at the back for the last witnesses. On carbon capture
and storage I recall that Mr Alistair Darling, the present Chancellor
of the Exchequer, a year ago was the minister responsible for
energy. He said that in his view—presumably he had been
briefed by his officials—that this technology might never
become commercially viable. Do you think he is right or not?
Professor Bahaj: In my view the question
was answered earlier on. Quite a lot of the technology is now
being researched on. There is the issue of coupling this technology
together. We do not have a large scale experimental programme
to actually say whether it is going to succeed or whether it is
not going to succeed, whether it is economic or not economic.
The jury is out on this technology. We need to have enough experience
with it to allow us to have confidence in giving you figures.
| 
