Guardian : Wind Farms Are Butchering Britain

Swathes of British countryside are being sacrificed 

Too much faith – and subsidy – is ploughed into wind power when there are alternatives to butchering Britain.

We know all about life, liberty, property and the pursuit of happiness, but what of beauty? This week hundreds of marchers have converged on Cardiff from the west Midlands and mid-Wales in a desperate bid to halt what, on any showing, is an aesthetic travesty. By what right?

The protested plan, which has seen the Welsh marches in uproar for six months, is to erect 800 more wind turbines across the Cambrian Mountains and build a 100-mile network of 150ft pylons over the Powys hills, down the upper Severn valley into Shropshire. It will turn the largest wilderness area of Britain outside a national park into hundreds of square miles of power station. There is no market demand for this and the electricity generated will be less than one conventional power station. It is all political. The entire project is financed by the taxpayer in grants and by a compulsory levy on electricity bills.

http://www.guardian.co.uk

About Tony Heller

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8 Responses to Guardian : Wind Farms Are Butchering Britain

  1. Charles Higley says:

    So, they have invented a self-perpetuating industry. The subsidies and the levy bring in an endless stream of money to feed the building frenzy of useless wind machines that require tons of rare elements, have a mammoth footprint, require miles of new roads and power lines, require almost constant maintenance and attendance as the wind is variable and the transmissions are incredibly prone to burning out, produces hardly any useful power, cannot produce quality power for industry, requires a ridiculously complex control system to protect the grid from overpowering, requires a fully-functional back up power supply when the wind fails, and, the icing on the cake, have a really limited useful lifetime while producing energy that is more expensive than any other source. It’s a win-win for the wind power builders and a lose-lose for everybody else and the environment. This is not green energy; it is not green anything.

    • Paul H says:

      You briefly touch on one criticism that is often ignored, Charles.

      “require miles of new roads ”

      Most of these windmills are so far off the beaten track that much countryside has to be ripped up and replaced with swathes of concrete both to give access to lorries involved in construction and later for maintenance operations.

  2. A K Haart says:

    Poor old Guardian – it tries so hard too.

  3. Jimbo says:

    Conventional power will still have to be on standby for when the wind fails. I suspect that future analysis will show windfarms have increased the UK’s carbon footprint. 🙁

  4. Ralph says:

    Has anyone ever questioned WHO in the UK government has an investment in any of the wind turbine manufacturers?

  5. P.J. says:

    It looks like Ontario is going this way too 🙁

  6. The GUARDIAN? Really?
    I’m a close as I get to speechless.

  7. bkivey says:

    Here in Oregon we’ve had tens of thousands of acres of once-pristine high desert turned into wind farms. Even the most ardent supporter of wind power concedes that the turbines are an eyesore. I’ve pointed out in my blog that one average-sized nuclear plant generates about 2000 MW and has a use factor of around 90%. It would take over 650 wind turbines at 3 MW apiece to equal that capacity, and the use factor ranges from 25% – 50%. The generating capacity is, of course, 0 when the wind dies.

    Now the Bonneville Power Administration (BPA) has announced that they will be unplugging wind farms when generating capacity exceeds the grids ability to handle it. This is primarily due to power generation from the dams caused by the runoff from the very high snowpack (it’s snowing in the passes as I write) this winter. As wind capacity has grown, managing the variable nature of the power generation has become increasingly difficult.

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