PLEA Network

21 October 2016, Renew Economy, A renewable fiction: Myths mainstream media refuses to let go. For reasons that are not entirely clear, renewable energy sources such as wind and solar appear to have gotten the better of mainstream media. For years now, many in mainstream media have been propagating myths about renewable energy in general, and wind and solar in particular. It’s unclear why this is so – whether it is simply about ideology, politics, the protection of vested interests or simply the fear of new technologies and new ideas. Since the big price spike in South Australia and then the blackout, however, the myth making has reached plague proportions and has spread to some surprising corners. From the arch conservative Andrew Bolt of News Limited to Chris Uhlmann at the ABC, and via so much of the Murdoch media, the Fairfax Press, commercial TV and radio and rather too many in ABC radio and TV, the myths have been perpetuated, egged along by conservative politicians. The instances are so many that it is impossible to count, let alone list, and for this article we will ignore the cheap sloganeering such as “renewables are a fraud”, “wind energy doesn’t work,” and “wind energy is a boondoggle.” The problem we identify in the following examples is that there still seems an inherent bias against wind energy, and it appears to be based either on a lack of understanding of how energy systems work, or how they are changing. They seem convinced that renewables are the primary cause of high electricity prices, that fossil fuel plants don’t need back up, that transmission lines were only built to link remote and unreliable wind farms. They fail to understand – and appear to have no interest in asking – that new technologies can make the grid cheaper and more stable, and that we should be accelerating the transition rather than slowing it down and turning to old and expensive alternatives. Read More here