To Archive List PageThe British Government and the European Commission continue to lie about the amount of power to be generated from wind power as part of their Great Climate Change scam. Which is more about wasting taxpayers' money, and pushing it into the pockets of their pals, than saving the planet from imaginary perils

Wind Power – the Deliberate Myths & Lies

Gordon Brown has a very infertile relationship with the truth; take his assertion that the Lisbon treaty was totally different from the much rejected EU Constitutional treaty as a prime example. So when he assures the nation that Britain is receiving 3 gigawatts of power from the 2,000 wind turbines already constructed, the nation can be sure that it just isn't true.
   In fact, that's the theoretical maximum output of the turbines, assuming the wind blows all the time and at a speed which the turbines can handle. The turbine industry, and the government itself, admit that the turbines provide only 27% of their maximum capacity on average. That's just 600-700 megawatts in 2007, not the 3,000 megawatts claimed by Mr. Brown.

Energy companies want to blight hundreds of rural acres with 3,000 wind turbines over the next 5 years. But wind farms are no substitute for 'proper' power stations and they are a totally impractical way of generating power. They are in use only because the government pays their operators massive hidden subsidies.

  • Wind turbines can work only 27% of the time – when the wind is blowing and only when it is blowing at the right speed. If the wind speed is too low, the turbine cannot operate. If the speed is too high, the turbine has to be switched off to avoid damage.
     
  • If the country relies on receiving a large percentage of its power from wind turbines, it will need conventional power stations running on standby, which is highly inefficiently, ready to play their part in a balancing act. When the wind stops, the conventional power stations will have to be run up to speed to bridge the gap.
     
  • The industry has no means of storing excess power from wind turbines. Which means that when demand is low, turbines have to be switched off to prevent damage to the national grid and the power-generation potential of the wind is wasted.
     
  • Wind farms can be operated only if they receive massive subsidies, which the government is doing its best to conceal. These subsidies are encouraging energy firms to invest in wind turbines at the expense of cheaper forms of power from non-fossil-fuel sources.
     
  • Low average wind speeds and the prospect of massive ecological damage do not deter the government from issuing licences for on- and off-shore wind farms.
     
  • The government paid out £217 million of taxpayers' money in subsidies under the Renewables Obligation in 2006-07. This subsidy is estimated to rise to over £3 billion in 2020.

The Great Wind Power Scam involves more than just
the unreliable occupant of 10 Downing Street

Gordon Brown's ministers have much the same relationship with the truth. Mike O'Brien, the energy minister, talks about a small reduction in the cost of energy from wind turbines if the government commissions enough of them to generate 25 gigawatts but he fails to mention that electricity from renewable sources receives a 50% hidden subsidy.
   Mr. O'Brien's claim assumes that a further 10,000 turbines can be built by 2020 to provide the 25 gigawatts. But he fails to mention that he is assuming that turbines, which take weeks to install, can be erected at the rate in excess of 2 per day.
   Erecting the monster off-shore turbines which Mr. O'Brien would like to see requires the use of an equally heroic construction barge and there is only one such barge in the world. The cost of the project, if it could be achieved, would be £100 billion and the hidden subsidies for the power generated would add 25% to energy bills.

A better way to spend all that cash
£100 billion would buy 37 nuclear power stations, which would produce 10 times more electricity than the wind turbines; electricity which would be reliable and available whether the wind blows or not.

So why all the lies?
The reason why the government is lying about wind power so freely is that it has accepted without protest, an impossible-to-achieve EU target. The Eurocrats have decided that we must generate 32% of our electricity using 'renewables' by 2020. Mr. Brown and his allies know that they will no longer be in active politics then. So it must be for purely personal image reasons that they perpetrate their deceits.
   Worse, their decade and a bit of dithering is leaving the country facing a power gap as elderly nuclear and conventional power stations are closed while the government does nothing to replace them.
   With global temperatures falling, there are some cold times ahead for the British public if the present generation of politicians continues with its destructive dithering and self-serving lies.

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