Andrew Neil nails Hammond lies on the cost of Windfarms

In a magisterial blog Andrew Neil picks apart claims by Philip Hammond that,

"onshore wind [turbines] doesn't need subsidy anymore, onshore wind can pay its way."

The thing is that Hammond's lazy claim is just one of many from this government. They have such a brainslack approach to renewables that they say anything, with or without evidence and expect to be believed.

The problem is that Andrew Neil smelt a rat.

Well, we've heard nothing from Mr Hammond's department but this is what we've had from the Department for Energy and Climate Change:

“The current high oil price, and the increasingly clear evidence on climate change, underline the need to move away from fossil fuels.
Onshore wind is one of the cheapest forms of low carbon energy and the UK has a massive natural resource to exploit.
There is no direct public subsidy, but wind energy does benefit from the Renewables Obligation.”

The first sentence is irrelevant to Mr Hammond's claim.

The second would suggest that onshore wind is so cheap and so plentiful that there is no need to subsidise it.

The third sentence confirms that there is indeed a subsidy to onshore wind turbine operators via the legal obligation of electricity companies to buy electricity at artificially high rates (and then pass on the extra cost to us, the electricity consumers).

I think that Mr Hammond has, as they say on t'interweb, been owned.