Do you know you're backing windfarms?
Employees of wind turbine companies have been canvassing support in Cumbrian towns to aid their planning applications to build on green field sites, encircling The Lake District National Park.
Residents of the towns probably have no detailed knowledge of the individual sites, but are supporting renewable energy, which they mistakenly believe to be deliverable and cheap.
The government’s obligation to the EU to build 7,000 more turbines before 2020 at a cost exceeding £100bn pounds, or more than £4,000 for every household in the country, is impossible to fulfil.
It would mean building almost two every day, and 3,000 of these are to be built offshore, ignoring weather conditions and the fact that there are hardly any of the specialised vessels needed for this type of construction.
Even if they were all built, they would produce less electricity than the coal powered Drax power station. The Royal Academy Of Engineering has calculated that wind energy is two-and-a-half times as expensive as other types of electricity.
Average households will pay an extra £400 per annum to meet the EU imposed green energy target, which will push many households and pensioners into fuel poverty.
Wind power is inefficient, very expensive, intermittent, has a huge environmental impact and saves minimal carbon dioxide emission. Each wind turbine earns over £400,000 per annum for its developer, of which about half is subsidy through the Renewables Obligation; the landowner is paid about £10,500 per turbine per annum.
Without the subsidy nobody would be building windfarms.
In 2005 the House Of Commons Committee of Public Accounts reported that “requiring users to source supplies from uneconomic providers has the same effect as taxing users to subsidise the providers”.
If we are to have a guaranteed supply of electricity that will not cripple British industry and plunge millions into fuel poverty we need more nuclear and coal powered stations, and we need them soon.
Those who are signing letters of support for wind companies are helping the companies to obtain vast subsidies, for the privilege of paying £400 a year more for an unreliable supply.
K SLINGER
Westnewton
2 September 2008
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Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
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