Animal Farm Windmill

[Bob Minchin]

I've just been listening to the R4 adaptation of Orwell's Animal Farm. The part where the animals decide to build a windmill in the belief that it will give them limitless electricity and reduce their working day to

2 hours made me think of the current windfarm building craze.....

[Davey]

But Orwell's might have had a chance of working.

[Andy Burns]

Next week on R4 - Berlin's Big Gamble

"It's an environmental experiment on an unprecedented scale. Germany's political parties have agreed to close the country's nuclear power stations and slash its use of coal, oil and gas. But can the industrial powerhouse of Europe really continue to churn out the BMWs and Mercedes on a meagre diet of wind and solar energy?"

[Steve Firth]

No.

Next question?

[therustyone]

Orwell wasn't plagued by PPF schemes in the day, so it might have worked in the long term. Germany imports electricity from Poland - which burns dirty brown coal in its power stations. How mad is that. And it uses the Polish grid to help transfer energy from one part of Germany to another, causing the Polish grid to trip out from overload.

rusty

[Dave Liquorice]

You are not thinking "German Green". That burning of Polish dirty brown coal in Poland isn't taking place in German power plants so they can close and the German Greens can claim a massive reduction in German CO2 emmisions.

They also import from France, lots of low carbon nuclear electricity. Funny that German Greens have got all the German nukes shutdown...

So? That's a Polish problem not a German one.

[The Natural Philosopher]

[jgharston]

Soviet power and electrification. The pigs were promising "a light bulb in every sleeping stall", so with that load demand it would probably have been workable.

JGH

[Owain]

They dind't promise an *illuminated* light bulb though.

Owain