Vikki Campion: Time to blow the whistle on misinformation about renewable energy
It’s a great Australian tradition to call people out when they’re talking BS, writes Vikki Campion, but the government’s new laws won’t allow us to call them out on their claims about wind power.
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Every office has one. That co-worker who claims the weekend surf was 10 feet high when the surf report said it was five.
It is a great Australian tradition to tell this co-worker they are full of BS.
At the office water cooler of the current Albanese government, that BS co-worker is Intermittent Power Boy, who boasts he is a big-wave surfer when not only can he not surf, he can’t even swim.
Under this new communications amendment put to the lower house on the final day of parliament, with an aim to rush it through by Christmas, it is not just social media platforms that will be able to impose their version of truth over personally observed and individually considered perceptions of reality; the government will be able to impose its version — and Intermittent Power Boy’s version — on you, too.
Intermittent Power Boy’s protection under Labor will be that they can make it a crime to argue against him if it causes “harm”.
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Suppose a 150MW wind farm produces enough electricity to power 65,000 homes, as Intermittent Power Boy tells us in the “unbiased information” the NSW Department of Climate Change put out.
In that case, the 11409MW of capacity should power nearly 5 million homes — every house in Tasmania, South Australia, the Northern Territory, the ACT and regional NSW.
Instead, AEMO data shows that for a great chunk of August, the nation’s wind factories generated about 11 per cent of what Intermittent Power Boy promised, where the reality would not even power Tasmania.
Marketing material from the announcement of Chinese-owned WhiteRock Gold Wind promised 175MW to the grid, yet AEMO data shows it has yet to deliver that for even five minutes in September and spent the bulk of August delivering less than 40 per cent of what it promised.
On August 14, from 10pm, it produced nothing and continued to create between 0 and not much more until 9.30am two days later.
Frequently, the wind does not work. But this doesn’t stop developers and their ra-ra girl ministers in the Albanese government from spruiking rubbish from foreign multinationals claiming it is powering millions of homes.
Intermittent Power Boy often shows up in question time, claiming that the Albanese government has ticked off enough wind and solar to power seven million homes.
The government’s new misinformation bill will ensure Intermittent Power Boy’s protection with all his spin.
After all, this justifies knocking out whale habitats, farmland and virgin bush for wind and transmission lines.
Australian Energy Market Operator data shows Australian wind operates at around 30 per cent of capacity.
Yet far from the truth, police enforce that on IPB; instead, our governments run his opinion as fact.
When Communications Minister Michelle Rowland claims the rapid spread of mis- and disinformation poses a challenge for societies around the world, she isn’t talking about their own.
The NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change is actively promoting wind energy through targeted ads on Meta, claiming that it will “deliver affordable, clean, reliable energy to everyone across NSW”.
The federal Department of Climate Change has also joined in, launching a series of ads from late August, promoting its Illawarra offshore wind projects as environmentally friendly.
The NSW Department of Environment and Climate Change claims in brochures written to provide “the community with unbiased information about wind energy”, that a 150 megawatt wind farm produces enough electricity to power around 60,000–65,000 homes.
Take the Hills of Gold project at Nundle, where the developers were able to successfully argue that their project would see a decrease in the cost of energy of 9 per cent of the turbines planning authorities initially rejected were reinstated, with the claim that the extra turbines would power an extra 48,000 homes.
If the trend between what Intermittent Power Boy claims and reality continues, it will actually sometimes power a small town of 16,000 homes and sometimes not even its 400 neighbours.
If the nearby wind data at existing wind factories around them is anything to go by, it will rarely, if ever make what Intermittent Power Boy claims.
His BS factor is no better illuminated than a recent revelation that the Central West Orana Renewable Energy Zone, which was originally cost at $650m just a few years ago, will now cost $5.4bn.
But Intermittent Power Boy says it’s cheap.
The problem with this bill is it says it will stop lies that cause “imminent harm to the Australian economy” or “severe consequences for society” yet you also won’t be able to tell the truth.
How much assistance have they had from the deputy director of the Chinese communist party’s publicity department Mo Gaoyi, who was sighted in Canberra this week?
It is never up to a government to tell us what to believe – especially when the facts paint a different picture.
It is our right not to take Intermittent Power Boy seriously.
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