Last Wednesday 24th June, Lord Hunt, the energy minister, announced in a press release that 'an extra 25GW of offshore wind energy could be accommodated around the UKs shores.' It goes on to day that 'the findings, a result of the Government's Strategic Environmental Assessment (SEA) will enable the Crown Estate to proceed with the third round of leasing the UKs waters for offshore wind farms.' In other words the Government is encouraging private enterprise to invest in erecting what is widely quoted as 7,000 wind turbines in the sea around Great Britain.
I am not going to get into a debate about climate change here. What I want to consider is how a Government Minister can talk absolute twaddle and nobody bothers to question what has been said. Between today and the 1st January 2020 there are 3,836 days. If we are going to erect 7,000 wind turbines in that time then we need to erect 1.82 turbines on average every day, including Sundays, in order to get there. If we spend a year sorting out the leases this average goes up to over 2 per day. This is clearly impossible. What astounds me is that if I can perform this elementary calculation why hasn't anybody else? Or have I missed something?
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