Seemingly an innocent postscript added by mistake to a wildlife article in The Daily Telegraph a week ago, reports that wind farms might not need as much backup as claimed.
The figures listed in the piece indicate that only 22 gigawatt-hours (GWh) of energy from fossil fuel stations should be added to the total of 23,700 GWh from wind farms, in order to fulfil the country’s energy demands.
In addition to this, the article states that according to the National Grid, the UK’s electric grid operator, for the period between April 2011 and September 2012, only 8,800 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions were required to be released because of power shortages due to lack of wind energy production.
Interestingly, the official site of the National Grid does not provide access to statistics that can verify the numbers listed in the Daily Telegraph. In addition, the authors of the piece seem to have missed the news released by BBC earlier this week, stating that two diesel power stations are to be constructed in Plymouth as a backup to renewable energy.
In any case, the authors of the addendum must have some very reliable sources, considering that even after quite a number of reviews published online, the piece about hunting of badgers has not been edited.
