Despite careful reading of your Wind Power supplement, or advert, (13 September), I was unable to detect the one relevant word, “profit”, in the whole 11 pages.
The wind energy industry is extremely coy about mentioning the size of the subsidy and large profit it gains from us. But profit is the motive force here, not climate change.
I don’t object to offshore wind farms, the further away the better, and when the UK public have been given the choice, offshore or onshore, they choose the former by a large margin. But profits are much larger on land because building and maintenance are much cheaper.
The industry typically brands as “nimbys” those who wish to protect our countryside and wilderness against industrialisation by the wind industry. They are not. Those who object never approved of wind farms or constructed the policies or regulations surrounding such structures.
Access to the unspoilt and natural landscape of all Scotland is the birthright of every Scot. In this context nimbys are those who seek to impose wind farms on others while refusing to accept them themselves. How many wind industry executives live 500m or even 5km from wind farms?
We are supposed to become, in some unspecified way, 100 per cent renewable in due course. But the probability is as remote as a new star appearing in the east followed by three wise men galloping over the horizon.
(PROF) ANTHONY TREWAVAS, Croft Street, Penicuik, Midlothian
21 September 2007
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2007/09/21/blowing-the-profits/