I am in strong support of the stance taken by Tynedale Council to fight the current wave of applications for industrial wind turbines in the Kirkwhelpington area.
Thankfully, Tynedale Council had the intelligence not to be taken in by the “all windfarms are good” mantra so glibly abused by the companies who wish to make millions by erecting giant industrial turbines in the most environmentally ludicrous areas.
Anyone without a vested interest, who has taken the trouble to actually investigate remote onshore wind power stations, will not be asking why Tynedale is fighting them. They will want to know how such developments ever got this far in the first place.
Giant turbines in remote locations attempting to feed unpredictable, intermittent and fluctuating power to a distant grid connection would be a poor result in itself.
When you then consider that we need conventional power stations to continue burning fossil fuels to produce “shadow” power to cover the fluctuations it simply exposes such developments for what they truly are – greed disguised as green.
The ability of these companies to pronounce that their turbines – each of which are the size of a 40 storey building – will not destroy our beautiful landscape or our environment is not only an insult to the intelligence but also demonstrates how the prospect of vast profits can affect your vision.
The massive and irreversible harm inflicted upon the communities and industries such as tourism that these developments destroy cannot be justified and Tynedale’s stand to try and fight this madness must be applauded.
We need alternative forms of energy production, we need to reduce our energy demands. I agree that we need a mix of energy sources, but badly located schemes simply drain the available resources. It is extremely sad (but regrettably not surprising) that the environmental agenda has now been hijacked by marketing and large companies, a situation which creates an increasing air of cynicism around the whole debate.
G. GREEN,
Ridsdale
8 February 2008
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2008/02/08/wind-power-debate-is-fuelled-by-greed/