Spot what’s missing and what’s included in this BBC account of a damning, slamming report about the inadequacies of windpower. The report, by the John Muir Trust, a conservation organisation (so definitely not in the pockets of big oil or the nasty industrialists that greenies claim are behind anything that goes against their creed) concludes that windpower is not available when it’s most needed, that windfarms routinely generate substantially less than their claimed capacity, and that peak demand for the output from the turbines usually happens when there’s little or no wind.
James Delingpole spells out here what the report actually means to the government’s energy policies. Given that the government is spending billions on these monstrosities, not to mention moulding most of our energy strategy around them, you would think the BBC would treat the report as high priority, a subject that needs just as much scrutiny as – let’s say – spending cuts.
Well, er, no. First, the account of the John Muir report merits just 450 words, compared to the 1,200 words that were deployed earlier in the week when Roger Harrabin bust a gut to tell us why we should not exploit shale gas. Second, there is no quote from anyone involved in the preparation of the report, and only around 20 words from the report itself. Let me remedy this omission by spelling out what Stuart Young, the author of the report, actually said:
“Over the two-year period studied in this report, the metered windfarms in the U.K. consistently generated far less energy than wind proponents claim is typical. The intermittent nature of wind also gives rise to low wind coinciding with high energy demand. Sadly, wind power is not what it’s cracked up to be and cannot contribute greatly to energy security in the UK. It was a surprise to find out just how disappointingly wind turbines perform in a supposedly wind-ridden country like Scotland. Based on the data, for one third of the time wind output is less than 10% of capacity, compared to the 30% that is commonly claimed”.
Rather interesting, and very relevant don’t you think? Not to the BBC reporter, though. In addition, the press release about the report actually very lucidly spells out five main findings. With greenie press releases, Richard Black and his cohorts routinely regurgitate every single word and every nuance. Not so here, only two findings are referred to, and the rest are ignored.
Finally, having thus glossed over most of the report’s findings, a full 125 words (more than a quarter) of the BBC account are taken up by Jenny Hogan, of Scottish Renewables (no axe to grind there, then). By contrast, with pro-green creed reports, Black, Harrabin and company usually completely ignore any idea that there might be opposition to the nonsense being spouted. The said Ms Hogan actually tells us that “no form of electricity worked at 100% capacity, 100% of the time”. The inclusion of such vapid drivel in a so-called serious piece of journalism defies belief. First because the Muir report does not mention anything about 100% delivery, it actually spells out that wind turbines are routinely working at less than the 30% that is claimed, and often only at 10%. The rest of her quote is simply green-creed propaganda and not related in any meaningful way to any of the report’s findings at all.
Overall, therefore, this feature adds up to a clumsily-contrived effort to actually bury the report. The contortions involved are par for the course. This is not journalism – it’s lip service hot air.
What is galling is that the report says nothing that pretty well all of us here didn’t already know. It’s a statement of the bleeding obvious, yet still our moronic politicians steamroller ahead, wasting OUR money on this white elephant.
I’m fully in favour of developing sustainable energy sources, especially if they free us from the need to rely on Middle Eastern oil producers, but can’t understand this fixation with wind.
As an ex Civ. Eng., now enviro campaigner, all I have ever asked is for the numbers, and they add up to a better future for my kids.
That these are either obscured, or don’t, has been a concern across many science lite, major hype ‘reports’ in this sector.
And forking out in support of a £4B edit suite to obscure facts that don’t suit some is insult to injury, especially when I can glean a much better cross-section of the situation – for free – on the internet.
The BBC chose to comment on this report on the its Scottish news page which given its source is not, on the face of it, unreasonable. OTOH, had the JMT report concluded that wind turbines are the greatest invention since penicillin it’s probable that it would have made the UK page. However, the BBC is conflicted here. The JMT is (BBC speaking) on the side of the angels being, basically, a greenie pressure group. Unfortunately for the Inner Party policy advisers to the BBC editorial praesidium, the renewable/sustainable pressure groups (funded largely with taxpayer largesse) are also on the side of the angels. Accordingly, I disagree with you to some extent as to the BBC treatment of this story. Basically – and unusually – because of this internal conflict the JMT paper was played with a relatively straight bat by the BBC.
It was unusual because were the BBC operating as a genuinely impartial news/analysis source, the JMT report would have taken its place among a multitude of critical and sceptical reports and papers which should be covered by the BBC’s environment team. As it happens the most authoritatve of those reports (IMHO) completely damn both technically and economically the notion that wind-power will ever be anything more than a marginal, ludicrously expensive and, as it happens, beauty-ruining contributor to the totality of UK energy. But the BBC refuses to deal with or even admit that there is a solid case against the wind-power obsession. I should note that I would not be surprised that somewhere on the BBC’s copious site there are references/links to such work. However, it’s the daily drumbeat of one-sided climate change, sustainability, renewables lunacy on the TV and radio and on the major pages of its online service that illustrates and conveys BBC bias not its transparent strategy for resisting claims that it is manifestly not impartial.
The JMT report only crept through the BBC editorial minefield and was dealt with relatively fairly because its source was, hitherto, impeccably green. I imagine the same report sponsored by, say, the Global Warming Policy Foundation would have been met with either silence or as a single dismissive sentence in a 1,500-word essay by Black or Harrabin on the wonders of sustainability and the horrors of Fukushima and Chernobyl.
Well said, Robin.