The BBC steadfastly avoids the facts about the wind farm scamDavid Shukman's reports on energy policy for the BBC failed to explain the true lunacy of the Government's plans.
A wind farm in the Irish Sea off the coast of Cumbria Photo: REUTERS
By
Christopher Booker 7:00PM BST 20 Aug 2011
What is the maddest thing going on in Britain today? There may be many competitors for that title, but a front-runner must be what the Government has made the centrepiece of its energy policy, to ensure that our lights stay on and that our now largely computer-dependent economy remains functioning. Last week, the BBC ran a series of reports by its science correspondent, David Shukman, on the Government’s plan to ring our coasts with vast offshore wind farms.
The nearest thing allowed to criticism of this policy came in an interview with the Oxford academic Dieter Helm, who we were told had “done the sums”. What, Shukman asked, had he come up with? The only figures Helm gave were that the Government’s offshore wind farm plans would, by 2020, cost £100 billion – scarcely a state secret, since the Government itself announced this three years ago – plus £40 billion more to connect these windmills to the grid, a figure given us by the National Grid last year.
Helm did not tell us that this £140 billion equates to £5,600 for every household in the country. But he did admit that the plan was “staggeringly expensive”, and that, given the current extent of “fuel poverty” and the state of our economy, he doubted “if it can in fact be afforded”.
Even shorter on hard facts, however, was Shukman’s report on a monster new wind farm off the coast of Cumbria, where a Swedish firm, Vattenfall, has spent £500 million on building 30 five‑megawatt turbines with a total “capacity” of 150MW. What Shukman did not tell us, because the BBC never does, is that, thanks to the vagaries of the wind, these machines will only produce a fraction of their capacity (30 per cent was the offshore average in the past two years). So their actual output is only likely to average 45MW, or £11 million per MW.
Compare this with the figures for Britain’s newest gas-fired power station, recently opened in Plymouth. This is capable of generating 882MW at a capital cost of £400 million – just £500,000 for each megawatt. Thus the wind farm is 22 times more expensive, and could only be built because its owners will receive a 200 per cent subsidy: £40 million a year, on top of the £20 million they will get for the electricity itself. This we will all have to pay for through our electricity bills, whereas the unsubsidised cost of power from the gas plant, even including the price of the gas, will be a third as much.
Industry begins to count the true cost of 'climate change' 11 Jun 2011
It is on the basis of such utterly crazy sums – which neither the Government nor the BBC ever mention – that our politicians intend us to pay for dozens of huge offshore wind farms. In a sane world, no one would dream of building power sources whose cost is 22 times greater than that of vastly more efficient competitors. But the Government feels compelled to do just this because it sees it as the only way to meet our commitment to the EU that within nine years Britain must generate nearly a third of its electricity from “renewable” sources, six times more than we do at present.
The insanity does not end here. The Government talks of building 10,000 windmills capable of generating up to 25,000MW of the electricity we need. But when it does so, it – like the BBC – invariably uses that same trick of referring to “capacity”, without explaining that their actual output would be well below 30 per cent. (Last year, onshore turbines generated just 21 per cent of their capacity.) In other words, for all that colossal expenditure – and even if there was the remotest chance that two new giant turbines could be built every day between now and 2020 – we could only hope to generate some 6,000MW. This is not only way below our EU target, it is only a tenth of our peak demand during those cold, windless weeks last winter, when wind power was often providing barely 1 per cent of the power we needed.
To keep the lights on during such times, for every new megawatt of wind capacity we build it will be necessary for to build a megawatt of capacity from gas-fired stations, kept wastefully running 24/7, chucking out carbon dioxide. This will add further billions to the bill we shall all have to pay, while ensuring that wind power does nothing whatever to reduce our overall emission of CO2. But this, again, is another thing that the Government and the BBC are careful never to tell us.
Madness is far too polite a word.
Svalbard bear attack: an Arctic parable for our timeThe more we learn of the unhappy story of Horatio Chapple, mauled to death by a polar bear in Svalbard, the more it becomes a chilling parable for our times.
First, there was the sad news of the attack itself, killing the boy and seriously injuring four other people, before the animal was finally shot. Then we were told that the expedition had gone to Spitzbergen to study the effects of climate change. At this point the BBC inevitably got in on the act, with a long article on its website explaining that, “thanks to climate change the number of polar bears may rapidly dwindle”, and that ever more tourists will flock to the Arctic “to catch a final glimpse of these animals”.
Finally, we learn that the charity which organised the fatal expedition was warned six months earlier of the need to take all protective measures against polar bears, from posting lookouts to checking whether rifles and flare guns were in working order. It seems that the importance of these precautions was not taken on board. The tripwire didn’t set off flares, the flare gun didn’t work at all and the expedition’s rifle fired at only the fifth attempt.
So a generation of young people is being brought up to see polar bears as cuddly creatures whose survival is threatened by global warming – not being told that in the past half-century, polar bear numbers have actually quadrupled. Cut off from the harsh realities of nature, children lose sight of the fact that those harsh realities may literally turn round to bite them. One result is the tragedy which, two weeks ago, made headlines across the world.
www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8713093/The-BBC-steadfastly-avoids-the-facts-about-the-wind-farm-scam.htmlBritain’s Wind Farm Scam Threatens Economic RecoveryPosted on August 22, 2011 by Anthony Watts
wattsupwiththat.com/2011/08/22/britains-wind-farm-scam-threatens-economic-recovery/#more-45663From
Benny Peiser at The GWPF:
In a sane world, no one would dream of building power sources whose cost is 22 times greater than that of vastly more efficient competitors. But the Government feels compelled to do just this because it sees it as the only way to meet our commitment to the EU that within nine years Britain must generate nearly a third of its electricity from “renewable” sources, six times more than we do at present. Madness is far too polite a word. –-Christopher Booker, The Sunday Telegraph, 21 August 2011
They are among the nation’s wealthiest aristocrats, whose families have protected the British landscape for centuries. Until now that is. For increasing numbers of the nobility – among them dukes and even a cousin of the Queen – are being tempted by tens of millions of pounds offered by developers. –Robert Mendick and Edward Malnick, The Sunday Telegraph, 21 August 2011
In the course of the 25-year lifespan of the wind farm at Fallago Rig it could net the Duke anywhere between £18 million and £62.5 million. One industry expert estimated Fallago Rig could generate about £875 million income over the next quarter of a century for the Duke and his commercial partner North British Windpower. –Robert Mendick and Edward Malnick, The Sunday Telegraph, 21 August 2011
The level of subsidy available to landowners to put up these turbines is out of all proportion to the public benefit derived from them and the temptation to ruin what is usually outstanding landscapes is overwhelming. It is a crime against the landscape. –Sir Simon Jenkins, National Trust, The Sunday Telegraph, 21 August 2011
Green taxes will make up more than a third of the price of electricity by the end of the decade, pushing up prices to new highs by 2020. Figures from Utilyx, the energy consultants and traders, forecast a 58pc rise in the cost of power by 2020, largely driven by the impending avalanche of green taxes due to come into force over the next 10 years. –Rowena Mason, The Sunday Telegraph, 21 August 2011
If Energy Secretary Chris Huhne has his way, Britons will be forced to subsidise renewable energy by approximately £100billion in the next 20 years. Electricity prices are likely to double as a direct result. The Government has to force energy companies to make electricity bills fully transparent so that the ever-increasing level of hidden green taxes are clearly listed for families and households. --Benny Peiser, Daily Mail, 8 July 2011
Energy firms have been asked to clearly explain how they calculate bills after concerns were raised that customers may have been overcharged after price rises. –Totally Money, 20 August 2011
Vince Causey says:
August 22, 2011 at 12:14 pm
In a sane world, any government that channeled billions of pounds from ordinary working people into the pockets of wealthy aristocrats and landlords, would be met with howls of protest from the BBC, shrieks of outrage from the Polly Toynbee’s and Guardinista’s; labour party MP after MP would be rising in the house to attack the Tory led coalition. There would be no end to it.
Yet nothing greets this infamy but deafening silence.
kellys_eye says:
August 22, 2011 at 12:22 pm
Far too little media attention is paid to the vested interest politicians have in these wind farm scams. Our Prime minister and the Deputy Prime Minister both have close relationships with family members who are benefitting enormously from the very policies these so-called leaders enforce. In any other country this would be considered fraud.
Wil says:
August 22, 2011 at 12:41 pm
Personally speaking, I have NO sympathy for the Brits or their EU cousins. None what so ever. If the majority of those people re-elect those dead beats they elect election after election then they’re getting exactly what they paid for – green eco-nazis. So suck it up and pay your green taxes – you all elected them and you’re getting the justice you deserve!
Queen's £38m a year offshore windfarm windfall - because she owns the seabedBy
MARTIN DELGADO and CHRISTOPHER LEAKELast updated at 10:04 AM on 24th October 2010
Prince to profit from his support for green energy
Lucrative deal is a 'masterstroke' for Palace aide
Revenue already soaring by 44 per cent a year
The Royal Family have secured a lucrative deal that will earn them tens of millions of pounds from the massive expansion of offshore windfarms. They will net up to £37.5 million extra income every year from the drive for green energy because the seabed within Britain’s ter ritorial waters is owned by the Crown Estate.
Under new measures announced by Chancellor George Osborne last week, the Royals will soon get 15 per cent of the profits from the Estate’s £6 billion property portfolio, rather than the existing Civil List arrangement.
Read more here:
www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1323228/Queens-38m-year-offshore-windfarm-windfall--owns-seabed.html#ixzz1Vq17yM4ZDieter Helm of Oxford University says
"if you want a kind of, sort of ballpark order-of-magnitude of cost, here,
offshore wind is one of the very few things that makes nuclear power look cheap – and it certainly isn’t cheap, nuclear power. And the only thing that makes offshore wind look a cheap way of reducing emissions is the kind of stuff being stuck on people’s roofs – solar panels and so on."
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Yup! That about sums up the situation embraced by the green political cadres of the BBC and Guardian!
