Glyndebourne Opera House wants to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions. This is a very worthy aspiration. The opera house has applied for and succeeded in getting permission to put up a 850kW wind turbine the pole of which will be 44m high. It will have three rotor blades having an overall diameter of 52m; the overall height would be around 70 metres. There have been some objections on aesthetic grounds because the turbine will be located on the South Downs and some think that the helicopter style blades of the turbine will spoil the beauty of the place.
The opera company calculates that it would save carbon emission by 855 tonnes each year, which they calculate to be around 71% of Glyndebourne’s own carbon footprint. I doubt that a 850kW turbine will actually save in the real world as much as 855 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions a year. Wind is intermittent and there has to be power station back up. This makes savings notoriously hard to calculate. I would be very surprised if the actual annual savings by Glyndebourne’s turbine were more than 400 tonnes of carbon dioxide each year, taking into account intermittency, carbon expenditure in servicing the turbine and the fact that much electricity will be produced by the turbine when none is needed. They may actually be much lower.
Nevertheless, 400 tonnes is a large figure and saving this is a good thing because opera is very carbon intensive activity. Operas need many power consuming lights, electrical engines to help move sets and of course these days all such entertainments are accompanied by iced drinks, air conditioned halls, catering and the like all of which use energy and therefore emit carbon dioxide and other green house gases.
Of course Glyndebourne’s own carbon footprint is not just the electricity that Glyndebourne consumes. The opera house is located in East Sussex but draws its audience from the whole country, particularly London. Getting down to Glyndebourne (I have never been there) must clock up about 120 kilometres of road miles. I suspect that many visitors get to Glyndebourne by car, probably large cars and some people also get there by helicopters.
As Glyndebourne were anxious to reduce its carbon footprint it is odd that they chose to erect a wind turbine before first doing some of the other things that that could and should have done. The most obvious was to stop people travelling to Glyndebourne by helicopter.
Glyndebourne is around 90 km from London as the crow and as the helicopter flies. A helicopter will on average consume 1 ½ litres of aviation fuel per kilometre, which for those of you better used to imperial measurements comes out at about four miles per gallon. A return trip to Glyndebourne by helicopter therefore will use around 120 litres of aviation fuel. A return trip by car would require say 10 km of fuel per litre and even allowing for the extra distance a car would only use 24 litres of fuel, which is 96 litres less than the helicopter.
The carbon emissions of aviation fuel and petrol are about the same per litre, although helicopters by their design emit more pollutants than modern cars. The greenhouse gas emissions for the round trip of the helicopter will be 540 grams and for the round trip by car 72 grams. Assuming that Glyndebourne banned helicopters from using its facilities people would arrive by car, saving 468 grams per helicopter.
I think that Glyndebourne has around 200 performances each year. I do not know how many performances are attended by people who arrive by helicopter but there is a charter service from Battersea in London that advertises flights to Glyndebourne. I have to make an assumption here and I shall assume that there are 200 trips a year – one helicopter per performance.
If Glyndebourne had banned people arriving by helicopters when they hatched the wind turbine scheme – two years ago – there would have been a saving on my assumption of 200 helicopter round trips amounting to a saving of 187 tonnes of carbon dioxide. As it is the Glyndebourne Opera house will ban helicopter arrivals from 2009.
Glyndebourne Opera House, like many institutions in the rush to be sustainable and reduce emissions has avoided doing the simple, easy cost effect thing to reduce emissions, such as a ban on helicopter flights. They have opted for a great show and display of carbon saving without doing the small and important things first. But then again, opera is all about show, isn’t it?
Filed under: carbon emissions, climate change, energy, fuel, global warming, petrol, pollution, wind turbines | Tagged: comparisoon of cars and helicopter emissions, Glyndebourne opera house carbon emissions. Glyndebourne, opera, wind turbine carbon savings
Excellent, but Glyndebourne should have been doing this a couple of years ago, and they would have saved considerable emissions.
From 2009 Glyndebourne will no longer be allowing audience to arrive by helicopter.
At present Glyndebourne provides coaches to transport audience members to and from Lewes station, with train times and details of the service being publicised in the annual booking brochure, in emails which go to every member of the audience prior to their visit and on Glyndebourne’s website. Glyndebourne commits to further encourage the use of this service, providing additional coaches to meet demand.
The turbine leans against this painted window, and the fully dimensional toys are installed so that they seemed to explode onto helicopter, tumble down helicopters and dance diagonally across the helicopter. You can save the actual annual savings by finishing the turbine yourself. There are aesthetic grounds of the helicopter whose day has passed too.