EPIC NIMBY FAIL

Nimbies tell lies. It's what they do. And when they're not telling lies, they're accusing everybody else of lying.

Amazing!

In the spirit of openness and fairness, we here at Wind of Change have previously challenged anyone to come forward who has hard evidence of a windfarm developer or operator or a supporter of wind energy deliberately and knowingly misinforming the public. Nothing as yet, but we'll report on it if it ever happens.

Elsewhere, though, a nimby has been making claims that "wind farm promoters are telling huge porkies". One of our team challenged this particular nimby to provide proof of any such porky-pies. Guess what she came back with ...

She pointed out that Action for Renewables, the voice of the renewables industry, had stated on its website that 10% of Britain's electricity needs could be produced by just 12,000 megawatts of installed capacity.

Said nimby then came up with a bunch of weird figures which, she believed, demonstrated that generating 10% of electricity in the UK by renewable means would be impossible without us building anything between 8,000 and 20,000 more wind turbines than we already have. Therefore, she insisted, the information given out by the voice of the renewables industry was an "untruth".

Now, really we should pity idiots like this one, because their determination to distort and misrepresent the facts is surely a form of mental illness.

Here are the actual facts. The British government's own figures for 2011 (last year) show that renewables generated a record-breaking 9.5% of our electricity in the UK. By the end of 2011, 12.2 GW (that's 12,200 megawatts) of renewable capacity had been installed.

So we can reasonably assume that, if 12.2 GW had been the installed renewable energy capacity throughout the whole of last year, the amount of renewable electricity generated would have been 10% of our needs, or thereabouts.

In other words, far from the prediction that 12,000 megawatts of installed capacity would provide us with 10% of our electricity being an "untruth", as the nimby idiot insisted it was, it turns out that it was a remarkably accurate prediction of something that has now happened. The UK is getting roughly 10% of its electricity from renewables, of which there are roughly 12,000 megawatts of capacity already installed.

Better still in Scotland, where renewables accounted for 35% of the electricity generated in 2011. Of course, some nimby fanatics tried to pretend that this remarkable achievement was really all down to hydroelectricity. But given that hundreds of wind turbines have been installed in Scotland in recent years, and not very many new hydro schemes have started, the only reasonable analysis is that wind power is now providing a healthy amount of Scotland's green energy.

The nimby who rose to the "tell us what lies the renewables industry has told" challenge fell flat on her face. Why? Because she was so determined to misrepresent - to herself and anybody else who would listen - the real state of affairs, she made a complete fool of herself. She accused Action for Renewables (the voice of the renewables industry) of telling lies. When what they had stated on their website (10% of UK electricity from 12 GW of installed renewable capacity) has in fact already happened!

That's what we're dealing with. Nimbies tell lies. It's what they do. Even when they're presented with the convenient truth, they can't see it.

Still waiting for proof that the renewables industry has been telling fibs. Looks like we'll be waiting a good long while yet.