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Citizens Electoral Council of Australia

Media Release  7th of June 2010

Craig Isherwood‚ National Secretary
PO Box 376‚ COBURG‚ VIC 3058
Phone: 03 9354 0544 Fax: 03 9354 0166
Email: cec@cecaust.com.au
Website: http://cec.cecaust.com.au
 

Wind “power” is a fraud

April Fools’ Day, 2001, marked the beginning of the Howard Government’s Mandatory Renewable Energy Target (MRET) scheme, which forced Australia to use “wind power”—now exposed as one of the biggest economic cons ever perpetrated on this country.

While the average high-income, inner-city Green voter voluntarily pays a premium for their “green” electricity, current data from the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) shows that the fabulous windmills that are conveniently well out of their urban eyesight and earshot are usually producing a miserable fraction of their installed capacity.

Wind farms across New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia, have a theoretical 1,609 megawatt capacity but electricity generation data shows that the wind power generated from 13th to 20th May for much of the time was next to zero. Why? Simply, the power won’t flow if the wind doesn’t blow. Wind power proponents claim that this doesn’t matter because if the wind is not blowing in one location, it will be blowing elsewhere. However, the actual power generation data shows this to be one big lie. Weather systems often extend over 1,000 km and no wind means no power.

This sheer economic lunacy means that no matter how many billions of dollars we fritter away on wind farms, we still need to maintain existing coal and gas generation infrastructure for the days the wind doesn’t blow; however, conventional thermal power plants can’t react in time to erratic wind gusts—they have to keep running or risk brownouts and blackouts. And in a storm with wind speeds above 90 km/h the turbines have to be shut down to avoid damage.

Worse still, John Howard’s MRET, which Kevin Rudd expanded, legally obligates wholesale purchasers of electricity to purchase this next-to-useless renewable power. When Howard took office in 1996 there were only 20 wind turbines in Australia, with a total installed capacity of around 2.7 megawatts. By the time Howard was dumped in 2007, Australia had 824 megawatts of installed capacity—a several hundredfold increase! Under Rudd, installed capacity has more than doubled in a few years to 1,835 megawatts.

The Coalition is particularly nutty about wind power—and duplicitous: Tony Abbott knows “global warming” to be “absolute crap”, but he has earmarked part of his useless, $3.2 billion global warming pledge to “introduce a range of initiatives to boost renewable energy use” [emphasis added] according to official Coalition policy. Just take a look at the Liberal Party’s own website on their environment page to see a big picture of several wind turbines with the claim this is “practical action not more Labor spin”. And then there’s the Nationals’ Warren Truss who issued a media release on 2nd February this year, stating that this direct action approach “fits with The Nationals view that regional Australia will play a key role in reducing emissions and producing green energy.”

Renewable insanity has a massive cost and Australians are now paying the price with massive electricity price hikes. The March 2010 quarter consumer price index showed annual electricity inflation hitting 18.2 per cent—the biggest electricity price increase since the early 1980s when general inflation was double-digit. This price hike is on top of the previous 12 month increase of 7.7 per cent and a 10.0 per cent increase for the March 2008 figures. In April, Origin Energy Managing Director, Grant King said power prices could triple by 2020.

Citizens Electoral Council leader Craig Isherwood said today, “The Australian government must stop this economic wrecking immediately. Stop treating the public like fools. We should decommission existing wind turbines and move to a nuclear powered future.”

Click here for a free copy of the Nov 2006 “Australia Must Enter the Nuclear Age!” New Citizen, to see how we should be powering our economy.

To buy a copy of What Australia Must Do to Survive the Depression, click here.

Click here to join the CEC as a member.

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