October 20, 2017
Letters, Northern Ireland

Environmental destruction of our land and sea by wind turbine farms should not be allowed to go on

Belfast Telegraph | October 20, 2017 | www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk

Your correspondent Stephen Trew (Write Back, October 17) is clearly an enthusiastic supporter of allegedly ‘renewable’ energy, in particular offshore wind generation. He clearly has no regard for the environmental destruction being wrought by both onshore and offshore wind turbine mega-farms.

Wind farm operators are heavily subsidised by taxpayers’ money to generate electricity at inflated prices. They are also paid for keeping their turbines idle when their contribution to the grid is not required and when the wind does not blow or blows too hard.

Additionally, because of the unreliable nature of wind generation, public money must be ploughed into stand-by generation capacity – inevitably requiring the burning of fossil fuels.

This squandering of taxpayers’ money has been justified to gullible politicians and academics as necessary to mitigate the effects of man-made global warming. This hypothesis has long since been disproven and, in any event, such mitigation attempts would be totally futile.

I would advise Mr Trew to visit the coasts of Great Britain to see the visual environmental destruction wrought by offshore wind farms. If he were to visit, as I have, the once-beautiful hills of Galloway in Scotland, he would see for himself the scarred moorland ploughed up to build new forests of these useless turbines onshore. There is nothing more destructive to the environment than the dogma of environmentalists.

Mr Trew laments the absence of offshore turbine farms near Northern Ireland’s coast. A recent plan to build a turbine city off the south east Down coast was abandoned after much public and commercial protest and the uncertainty of continuing future subsidy.

In future, all proposed wind turbine development must be subject to binding local referenda of those who live and/or make their living in the affected areas.

ALAN LOVE

Engage (formerly Demos Direct Initiative), Lisburn, Co Antrim

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2017/10/20/environmental-destruction-of-our-land-and-sea-by-wind-turbine-farms-should-not-be-allowed-to-go-on/