October 30, 2011
Scotland
Scotland
MEP brands windfarms ‘architectural follies with little or no benefit’
By Jane Candlish, The Press and Journal, 29 October 2011
By Jane Candlish, The Press and Journal, 29 October 2011
A Scottish MEP said last night that windfarms were the modern equivalent of national follies but with less practical benefit.
Struan Stevenson was speaking at an anti-windfarm meeting at the Royal Highland Hotel in Inverness, organised by Highland councillor Jim Crawford, an outspoken critic of windfarms.
Mr Stevenson, a Conservative MEP, said the Scottish Government’s renewable energy policy and reliance on windfarms was creating a rural landscape of “expensive, modern-day architectural follies with little or no practical benefit to the environment”.
He said: “Giant, industrial wind turbines are the modern-day equivalent of architectural national follies like Mccaig’s Tower in Oban, or the National Monument on Calton Hill in Edinburgh. Like those expensive vanity projects, windfarms serve no practical purpose, yet they certainly aren’t redeemed by the aesthetic merits of their 19th-century predecessors.
“All they do is force up electricity bills, driving more than a million Scots into fuel poverty, creating a rising tide of bankruptcies, trashing Scotland’s unique landscape, while failing to reduce carbon emissions.
“The government badly needs to look at embracing a wider, more economically and environmentally- sustainable energy mix.”
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2011/10/30/mep-brands-windfarms-architectural-follies-with-little-or-no-benefit/