National Wind Watch: Wind Energy News » Government climate change adviser claims wind energy targets met

The Government’s chief climate adviser claims Britain has already approved enough wind turbines to meet renewable energy targets and the public will soon be able to decide on other ways to create renewable energy.

Lord Deben of Winston appears to contradict government forecasts that the numbers of wind turbines are expected to triple by 2030 – adding almost 10,000 to Britain’s landscape.

The Conservative peer said there are already enough wind farms with planning permission to meet climate change targets, and thereafter the public will be able to decide on other ways to cut emissions, the Times reported.

His claims seem at odds with plans published by the Committee on Climate Change to cut emissions by 2030. All plans published by the committee include creating the capacity to generate 25 gigawatts of onshore wind to achieve this target. At the moment Britain generates seven gigawatts from more than 4,000 onshore wind turbines and the capacity to generate a further six gigawatts have been approved.

Lord Deben also said people like Lord Lawson of Blaby, the former chancellor, should not be classed as ‘climate change deniers’ but should instead be referred to as “dismissers.” He said these people do not say climate change is not happening but deny the urgency to take action.

Lord Lawson of Blaby has warned that climate sceptics are treated with same vitriol as Holocaust deniers. He also accused the Prince of Wales and the Climate Change Secretary Ed Davey of being hostile.

Lord Lawson, who founded the Global Warming Policy Foundation think-tank, which questions man-made climate change, said he had never experienced such vilification either in his private or political life.

In a press release he said: ”According to … Ed Davey, the global warming dissenters are, without exception, ‘wilfully ignorant’, and in the view of the Prince of Wales we are ‘headless chickens’. We are regularly referred to as ‘climate change deniers’, a phrase deliberately designed to echo ‘Holocaust denier’.”