Wind turbines neither green nor reasonable
The Sun Times, www.owensoundsuntimes.com
I attended the meeting in Meaford hosted by IPC to outline their plans for wind turbines in the town.
I would estimate that at least 80% of the people attending were in fact against wind turbines being installed in Meaford.
One reader of your paper pointed out that these turbines provide money to farmers. While true, wind turbines are only installed in small areas, and even if the provincial government has their way and installs 4,000 of them, it will at most help about 2,000 or fewer farmers.
Perhaps though the worst thing about the wind turbine plan is its effect on future land use patterns in this town. Looking back 50 years, who could predict that nearby towns like Wasaga Beach would grow from 500 people to 30,000? Or that lakefront property would go from $2,000 to $500,000? Each turbine creates a zone around it that will not have any housing constructed on it for the next 50 years. The size of this zone is at least 100 acres, but more realistically is about 300 or more acres. With 26 (or far more) more towers coming to Meaford, that is a lot of missed opportunity for our local home building community.
There are people who will lose large portions of their retirement savings if these turbines are installed: retirement style countryside properties fall to about half their value when surrounded by wind turbines. Would you buy 10 acres to look at 15 blinking spinning turbines through your retirement? I talked to three such people at the IPC meeting in Meaford.
As a PhD physicist and taxpayer I can assure you that each of these turbines needs to be subsidized by taxpayers to the tune of $350,000 or more per year – and they only produce $100,000 worth of power.
They are neither green nor reasonable.
Our electric bills are skyrocketing due to this ill-conceived plan.
Ontario already has very clean power. Much cleaner than even Denmark – the ‘leader’ in wind. Residential electric rates in Denmark are about four times ours here in Ontario.
Multiply your electric bill by two or more to see where we are headed in Ontario.
Tom Andersen
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2010/12/02/wind-turbines-neither-green-nor-reasonable/