From JoNova

By Jo Nova

Repowering with intent to deceive…

When the subsidies run out, and an old industrial wind plant is due to be demolished and rebuilt, there are perfectly good English words the industry could use like demolish, rebuild or replace, but instead they call it “repowering” — as if we could just plug a bigger extension cord in and let those turbines grow.

In the headline above, Reneweconomy could have just as easily have said the cost of “rebuilding” the old wind farm was too high, and most of the country would know exactly what that means. Instead “repowering” sounds like a minor low cost maintenance job. Nothing to see here!

Think of the difference between someone saying they want to repower your house compared with saying they’re going to demolish and rebuild it…

You might agree to a little repowering without thinking about it. And that’s the point isn’t it? To sneak in a giant civil works operation and a set of 200 meter towers with blades bigger than the wingspan of a Jumbo Jet. Those new foundations will need 3,000 tons of concrete each. Just call it repowering!

Old industrial wind turbines are only 1MW or so, but the new ones are 6 to 8 MW. That’s six times more powerful, and nearly three times as tall. Obviously, none of the old bearings, gears, blades or footings will be reused in the new towers. Ironically, the only thing about repowering that doesn’t change is the power-cord.

It also hides the short, pathetically non-renewable, life of the old wind turbines

Old wind towers don’t die, of course, it is unmentionable, they just get repowered. (Don’t think about the cost, the waste, the disposal. Don’t think about how coal plants run for 50 years.) Shh!

The term is an official industry term now, o-so-conveniently, and even the commentators admit in the details that it means a complete rebuild.

Repowering a wind farm involves completely decommissioning the existing site – nothing can be reused except perhaps the connection to the grid.  — Reneweconomy

So the underlings of the industry just absorb the term and use it in their press releases. But someone in a deep-marketing-bunker had to come up with the deceitful PR term in the first place, and they were not hoping you would understand it. It was never meant to inform — only to reframe.

Out with the old, in with the subsidy:

Think of “Repowering” as a shield to deflect attention

Before long, the absurdly meaningless marketing word fills headlines, legal documents and precious seconds of our day. And harried, heavily-taxed voter’s eyes glaze over. Less of them notice that renewables are not renewable, or that the cost of all this demolition and construction must be pushing up electricity bills.  The local community-group leader might not pay attention until too late, when the trucks arrive with the supersize 747 wings and 18,000 tons of Repowering Concrete.

Every abused word is a win for the parasites unless we name and shame them for the deceit. The Collectivist Left wordsmiths abuse language all the time (and the foolish Right let them get away with it). Climate change used to mean the climate changed, but now it means your car causes cyclones. Liberal used to mean free. The word-thieves steal perfectly good words and distort their meaning. They destroy our common language one word at a time.

Our language is our heritage. It is our power to understand. Tell the children we must protect it.