September 30, 2011
England, Letters

Wind farm industry is subsidised robbery

Western Daily Press, 28 September 2011

It is all very well Dale Vince, the founder of Ecotricity, slamming MP Neil Carmichael for double standards over his objecting to a wind farm proposal in Berkeley Vale, while hoping to build on on his land in Northumberland, but Mr Vince would do well to examine his own conscience regarding his hypocritical attitudes. On Ecotricity’s website he states: “We attribute our planning success in large part to our Good Neighbour policy through which we only commit to build turbines where we can be sure they will be good neighbours throughout their lifetime. If we can’t be sure, we walk away.”

The overwhelming majority of the neighbours to the proposed site he is attempting to develop in Berkeley Vale are against the turbines, but he still hasn’t walked away as he has promised to do. He doesn’t even have the courtesy (or the guts?) to come and talk to ‘the neighbours’. Instead, he conducts a phoney poll asking skewed questions to uninvolved people living miles away from the site – and then claims he has consulted the neighbours!

But these two wind advocates have much in common. They both stand to gain handsomely from an expensive, stuttering and unreliable technology, while talking up their supposed benefits to people who, increasingly, are no longer taken in. They are part of a “Robin hood in reverse” brigade, getting – or will be getting – huge sums from householders’ electricity bills (including those in fuel poverty) while trying to keep this iniquitous practice quietly to themselves, hoping it won’t be noticed.

If wind turbines were as efficient and cost-effective as the wind companies claim, they would be built without subsidies. However, not one single large wind turbine would be standing if it weren’t for these subsidies stolen from an unsuspecting public. With subsidies for wind turbines already being drastically curtailed in some cash-strapped countries and the occasional whisper that the same will soon happen here, Mr Vince must be wondering just how long he will be able to get away with his amazing good fortune.

The trouble is, with Mr Cameron’s father-in-law getting millions from his existing and future windfarms and Mrs Clegg on the board of one of the world’s largest renewable energy companies, there will be considerable resistance to any change to the flawed and discredited subsidy system.

It’s time the people who are making these opportunists even richer made their voice heard.

Roger Stroud
Stinchcombe, Gloucestershire


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/09/30/wind-farm-industry-is-subsidised-robbery/