January 15, 2013
Australia

Senator Xenophon blows in

JOURNALIST: Jenny Oldland | Yorke Peninsula Country Times | 15 January 2013 | www.ypct.com.au

Independent Senator Nick Xenophon met with opponents of the Ceres wind farm project at Curramulka last Tuesday.

He said the $1.3billion proposal could be a white elephant embroiled in litigation and could increase power prices.

“This proposal doesn’t make economic sense and the environmental benefits of wind energy are overstated,” Mr Xenophon said.

“There are smarter ways for producing renewable energies and wind is the lazy way of doing it.

“With 50 per cent of the nation’s wind farms, South Australia has too many eggs in the wind farm basket at the expense of base load renewable technology such as geothermal and solar-geothermal.

“The problem with wind energy is it is intermittent and unreliable, and fails to deliver the carbon savings it spruiks because coal-fired power stations have to be kept on standby in the event the wind dies down.

“The economics just don’t add up and host farmers are chasing fool’s gold.”

Senator Xenophon currently has a bill before federal parliament, co-sponsored by Victorian DLP Senator John Madigan, which will impost national standards on noise emanating from wind turbine via an amendment to the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Act 2000.

The bill also seeks to give powers to a regulator to monitor and ensure wind farms do not great excessive noise for those living near turbines, and calls for wind farms to publish information on noise, wind speed and direction, weather conditions and power output.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2013/01/15/senator-xenophon-blows-in/