Forty-five years ago, on this day, November 17th, 1978,
Formed from the ITDG Wind Panel along with other interested parties and representatives from industry, to promote wind power in the United Kingdom. The inaugural meeting of the BWEA took place on 17 November 1978 at the Rutherford Laboratory with Peter Musgrove of Reading University as chairman.
The amount of carbon dioxide in the air was roughly 335ppm. As of 2024 it is 423ppm, but check here for daily measures.
The context was that wind power was seen as a possibility, albeit at a small cranky one that might only be of use in places which were far distant from the grid. And it had started, as these things often do, in university research engineering departments. But eventually these universities can no longer do all the things needed – there’s competing commercial interests. And then a sensible thing to do, not just lobbying purposes, but also to keep the politics and commercial battles kind of at arm’s length, is to set up a kind of trade association. They’re not pure play trade associations, of course, they’re just an interest group for all the different people interested in the topic. Trade Associations tend to come later.
What we learn is that wind has a long, long history in the UK.
What happened next, it would take a long time for offshore wind to kick in, that wouldn’t happen until 2010. So that was mostly as a result of the extreme hostility to onshore wind by some local authorities and also by the Tory party in central government.
What happened next? The British took over, invaded Egypt in 1883. After squabbles over the money I’m not going to talk to you about Suez ‘56.
What do you think? Does this pass the ‘so what?’ threshold? Have I got facts wrong? Interpretation wrong? Please do comment on this post, unless you are a denialist, obvs.
References and See Also
Feb 2024 article about the challenges facing wind power
https://www.ft.com/content/7f742d23-673b-47d3-9ce9-64fa5d322abe
Also on this day:
November 17, 1968 – UK national newspaper flags carbon dioxide danger…
November 17, 1980 – International meeting about carbon dioxide build up.