Take this money off wind energy firms
Credit: Western Mail | Tuesday, March 3, 2020 | www.walesonline.co.uk ~~
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If the figures regarding “constraint payments” paid to UK wind farms, published in the letter from Ms Kristine Moore and Dr Dominic Costa of Llanidloes on February 26 are correct, and I have no reason to doubt them, then it is an absolute scandal.
According to them, UK wind farms were paid a total of £139.1m in 2019 in “constraint payments”, so as to not generate electricity.
Even worse, due to a windy start, wind farms have already earned £71.2m in less than two months of 2020, so as to not generate electricity.
The constraints were enacted because the capacity of the grid connectors from remote wind farms to centres of UK population were exceeded or because it has been too windy, demanding shut-down for safety reasons. How ludicrous is that ?
Some of these huge wind farms have been erected on the moorland catchment areas of our rivers, especially at Pen-y-Cymoedd in the Valleys and in Powys, thereby replacing absorbent peat and grass, with non-absorbent concrete, tarmac and hard shale, so the wind farms have contributed to flash-flooding downstream. Yet they are also paid, at double its wholesale cost, not to generate electricity. Scandalous!
I wonder how the poor cash-strapped flooded house-holders of the Welsh Valleys, Shrewsbury, Tewkesbury, Ironbridge, Gloucester, Worcester, Hereford and elsewhere in the UK feel about such unpalatable news?
How about removing these non-deserved, unearned millions of pounds from the wind energy companies and donating it to house-holders and little businesses ruined by the floods? After all, the wind energy companies are partially responsible.
Lyn Jenkins
Gwbert, Cardigan
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