Unwindy Britain

Britain’s 3,000 operational wind turbines produced 0.04 per cent of the power we used on December 30, according to a report in yesterday's Times. This was one seventy-fifth of the amount of power produced on November 2, the windiest day of the quarter. About enough for the average household to keep a one-bar electric fire going for 12 minutes, according to my calculation.

No great surprise there, we were hearing all year that there was not much wind about.

What is truly shocking however is that nobody seems to know ‘the extent to which last year was historically unwindy’ and that the best we can say is ‘The past year may have been exceptionally still. It may not.’

You mean to say that nobody has bothered to produce a hockey stick graph showing us the windiness of the last 1,000 years? And that we have nevertheless bet the farm on a belief that blowing in the wind is the answer?

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