Onshore wind gives far less than we’re told

Imust apologise for having last week mistakenly reported that, despite the drive of the US in the Obama years to build ever more heavily-subsidised wind and solar farms, the entire contribution of wind and solar to US electricity consumption is still only “less than 14 per cent”. Foolishly, I cited that figure only after a quick internet trawl, where it is quoted on various websites, including Wikipedia.

Only when I subsequently referred to a more reliable source did I find that the figure was in fact absurdly exaggerated. All the US was actually getting last year for all the billions of dollars it has spent on wind and solar farms was just 5.4 per cent of its electricity. Most of the rest, of course, came from those CO2-emitting, “planet-destroying” fossil fuels that Obama was so keen to see disappear.

So how does this compare with the position here in England, where we are continually told that wind and solar are now providing ever more of our own power? The official headline figures do not separate England, where the majority of the population lives, from the rest of the UK. But thanks to some very clever detective work by Paul Homewood on his Not A Lot Of People Know That blog, we can see that the English figures are in fact strikingly similar to those for the US.

The contribution of English onshore wind and solar farms to electricity used in England amounted last year to just 5.3 per cent. That intermittently generated by all the thousands of wind turbines spread across the English countryside was just 2.4 per cent: rather less than that fed into the grid by a single medium-sized gas-fired power station like that recently opened at Carrington outside Manchester – which, thanks to the “carbon tax” and the Climate Change Act, could be the last we ever see built. There’s another very uncomfortable fact you will never see discussed on Wikipedia.