The 'scam' of Wind Farms

The BBC's coverage of the openning of the Thanet offshore wind farm was mostly a disgrace. Endless 'journalists' repeating that the 100 turbines in the £780m wind farm "are expected to generate enough electricity to power 240,000 homes" and rarely a questionning word posed. The reality is of course far different, if you allow for the usual load-factors and more realistic domestic usage figures then you discover that the new wind farm will only supply 131,000 homes. However on a cold windless day, so common in the English winter the actual number of houses supplied with electricity by the wind farm will be a big fat zero. Thus the need for coal or nuclear power stations to supply the power when the wind farms cannot BUT if the other power stations are there and able to supply all the power then why bother with the wind farms at all?

To arrive at the answer you must, as so often is the case, follow the money. On top of the £40 million in electricity sales, the wind farms owners, Vattenfall, will collect at least £60 million a year in Renewable Obligation Certificates. Over the 20 year life of this farm that will make a public subsidy of £1.2 billion which oddly is about the figure required to build a 1GW nuclear power station, which would be capable of producing more than 13 times power than this wind farm. Whay is this point never raised by the green supporting BBC?

Chris Huhne and others witter on about green jobs in the green economy. well it seems that the Thanet wind farm will create a masive 21 jobs. Hmmmm....