$65 Billion On Wind Farms, Boris? You Might As Well Spend It On Unicorn Tears

Apparently BoJo has got his mojo back. Quick, someone take it off him before he does any more harm.

I think I preferred him when his mojo was lost down the back of the sofa — and he looked knackered and woebegone.

But all that has suddenly changed. Speaking to the virtual Conservative Party conference, the Prime Minister was, for once, full of that old bluster and self-confidence, as he announced his new energy plan for the UK.

The answer to our electricity needs? Off-shore wind farms. Loads of them. Everywhere up and down our coast. He would make Britain the “Saudi Arabia of green energy”, he told a bemused public.

This from a man who once said wind turbines couldn’t blow the skin off a rice pudding.

He was pretty much right then. I wonder what changed his mind?

It’s another flip-flop on policy, this time nothing to do with COVID.

Last year the talk was all about nuclear power.

That was a genuinely exciting plan to reduce our carbon emissions through stable, almost renewable energy.

It would have worked, even if nuclear power stations do cost a few quid to build.

But now it’s those bloody turbines. You may remember David Cameron had one on the side of his house in Notting Hill when he was Prime Minister.

That was five years ago. It’s probably generated enough energy to boil a cup of tea by now.

Wind turbines are for virtue-signaling politicians.

They’re not the real answer to our energy problems.

There’s nothing wrong with them being part — a small part — of our cleaner energy policy.

Even if they do scar the landscape from Northumberland to Cornwall and have a seriously bad effect on local wildlife.

The real problem, though, is that they won’t do what Boris expects them to do. It won’t work. Don’t take my word for it.

Here’s what the environmental campaigner Zion Lights had to say (yes, I know, it’s British law that all environmental campaigners must have weird names — like Pixie Hempmuncher or Peregrine Hummus).

She says: “Even if we cranked up wind-power provision to the level the Prime Minister proposes (40 gigawatts), this amount would power only about half the homes in Britain — or seven percent of the total national energy demand.

“And that is only when the turbines are turning — a key point.”

No kidding, Zion.

One of the problems with wind is that it doesn’t always blow — and batteries to store the electricity generated are nowhere near advanced enough to overcome this little difficulty.

Wind turbines, especially off-shore turbines, are also expensive to build, expensive to maintain, polluting to construct and they need replacing very often indeed.

So we will be investing a massive amount of money — some experts reckon more than £50 billion ($65B) — in an energy source that will satisfy less than ten percent of our needs.

Frankly, you might as well spend £50 billion ($65B) harvesting unicorn tears. They would be about as much use.

It’s yet another policy reversal — and one that yet again seems to have been made on an impulse, on the hoof.

Nuclear power — by far and away the safest means of generating electricity and one of the cleanest — is the way forward.

As that campaigner Zion Lights admitted.

Come on, Boris, think again. Or come election time, the voters may take your mojo and shove it somewhere the wind occasionally blows but the sun doesn’t shine.

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