I’m not trying to pick on Hekia. She really needs to be careful about what she signs off on. Last week she produced some rubbish stats from the Dept of Women’s Idiocy. She should seek out those who gave her those stats and fire them. As a taxpayer I object to my taxes being used to support the production of misleading statistics, or propaganda.

Today there’s another release entitled-

“Renewable electricity generation at highest level ever.

Strong hydro inflows and generation from new wind and geothermal sources has resulted in the highest level ever of annual renewable electricity generation”

The impression is given that NZ is gaining ground in renewable energy production, with wind power bracketed in with geothermal and hydro power. In the first place, the reason we are generating more renewable electricity is because demand has greatly increased, and that in turn is because the Rio Tinto Aluminium smelter has returned to full production. The smelter uses 10-15% of NZ’s annual electricty and it is generated at Lake Manapouri. A more honest headline would be “Electricity generation returns to normal levels with Rio Tinto back on stream.”

As for wind, it represents a paltry 413 Gwh of the 10,655 Gwh generated for the December quarter. This was generated intermittently and at highly uneconomic cost. To bracket this unreliable and costly source in with the effective Hydro and Geothermal power sources is stretching credibility somewhat.

Once again, we seem to have propaganda (designed to boost the concept of wind power) rather than an objective presentation of facts. This is not Nth Korea Hekia. Your press releases will be subject to criticism.