On its Chapel Hill Solar Farm website , Rheinisch-Westfälisches Elektrizitätswerk (RWE) claim that the Monksfield Solar Complex would “provide the equivalent energy needs of 19,894 Worcestershire homes and CO2 savings of over 1.7 million tonnes which equates to taking more than 1 million cars off the road over the lifetime of the project”.
That’s not true – it’s a solar benefits con:
- Firstly, its the equivalent energy needs of 5,500 Worcestershire homes, not the 20,00 claimed (which RWE inflated to 25,000 in their planning application)
- Secondly, it’s the equivalent of 25,000 vehicles off the road for the lifetime of the project
The 20,000 homes calculation is based solely on electricity consumption, not energy needs. Energy needs should take into account gas as well. Using the same data source as RWE in their planning application, dividing the amount of CO2 saved by the total of gas and electricity consumption reduces the benefit to 5,500 homes. That doesn’t sound quite as impressive against the 260,000 or so households in Worcestershire does it?
You might thinks that this is semantics, but remember the Not Net Zero agenda is predicated on replacing fossil-fueled domestic heating (e.g. gas and oil) with green electric heating systems. Therefore, RWE’s use of “energy needs” rather than “electricity consumption” does seem appropriate. It’s just that they didn’t use the correct figures in their calculations.
To some extent this is probably irrelevant anyway, as RWE has made the “powering local homes” claims in others of its solar farm planning appliations and associated propaganda websites. However, once the planning permission is granted, RWE then contracts with commercial companies for the output of the solar farm via power purchase agreements. You can verify this by going reading RWE’s press release, and then read their planning statement (page 25) for Cotmoor solar farm. A neat way of gaining public support for the plans and pulling the wool over the eyes of planners, councillors and planning inspectors!
RWE’s 1m vehicles is predicated on multiplying the 25,000 annual vehicles off the road savings by 40 years! That is the sort of crackpot maths our politicians and advisory think tanks come up with to inform their policies. To be fair, others in RWE realise the error of this claim – see their press release in relation to Langford solar farm going live which has a more appropriate number in its stated benefits. We did ask the RWE development manager whether she thought that the 1m vehicles claim was disingenuous but she declined to reply to this question.
It’s strange how the numerous half-truths and errors in their planning application and marketing website always seem to be in favour of RWE. Do you feel that they are trying to pull the wool over your eyes?