The Committee on Climate Change has released a new brochure, Reducing UK emissions, described as a “2018 Progress Report to Parliament”.

It’s a long document – 267 pages – but it has four messages to the Government at the front, one of which is this graphic:

Yes, they really are claiming that adding more wind turbines is simple, low cost, and an alternative to gas. The graphic says “see p68”, and if you look ahead to page 68 you will see that this is not confirmed at all. The figure shown there gives an estimate for wind costs in the mid 2020s, and even that estimate is not, as claimed, 25% cheaper than gas, until an additional “carbon cost” (not explained anywhere in the document) is slapped on top of the gas.

But of course the main reason why this is a thoroughly dishonest claim by Lord Deben and his team is that comparing wind and gas capacity is a misleading, false comparison. Wind power is highly intermittent, requiring backup from other sources to provide power when the wind isn’t blowing. Everyone knows this, but the charlatans who wrote this report have swept it under the carpet. Throughout the entire report, there is virtually no mention of this crucial point.

Here, courtesy of Gridwatch, is an illustration of how effective wind power has been over the last week. You may not be able to make out the line for wind power. It’s the blue one, that frequently disappears from view as it merges with the zero line:

We have, apparently, about 19 GW of wind power capacity, but the actual output recently has been around 1 – 2 GW. So building new wind and solar power is not simple and low-cost, as they claim. The choice is not, as falsely implied by the CCC, between building wind or gas, it is between building wind + gas or gas. The statement at the bottom of their picture, that failing to pursue these options increases energy bills, is straight out of the Ministry of Truth: it is precisely because we have been following these options that our electricity costs have been rising.