Sunday 18 August 2013

The wind turbine madness must be stopped in Devon - and elsewhere!

This is a wake-up call for people in the UK and elsewhere. Only fierce protests can stop the wind turbine madness!

RWE, a German energy firm, wants to construct 240 offshore turbines, each 722ft tall – more than four times the height of Nelson’s column – to generate 1,200 megawatts of electricity.

The scheme, which could earn RWE hundreds of millions of pounds a year in consumer subsidy, is planned for an area 10 miles off the North Devon coast, eight miles from Lundy Island, a 1.7 sq mile outcrop owned by the National Trust.

Its developers say it will help Britain meet its renewable energy targets and could boost the economy by creating thousands of jobs.

But the plans have prompted a backlash from residents in Devon and Lundy, as well as environmental and heritage groups, who claim it could cause lasting damage.

Describing the Atlantic Array proposal as “truly alarming”, the National Trust warned it would “fundamentally change” views from North Devon and Lundy and pledged to fight it. --

The Renewable Energy Foundation (REF), a charity publishing data on the energy sector, calculated that it could earn RWE around £313 million a year in consumer subsidy under the Government’s Contracts for Difference (CFD) scheme.

Dr John Constable, director of REF, said: "The scale and pace of the EU renewables targets is unquestionably leading to devil-may-care development on and off-shore, which leads to concerns about local environmental impact, but these objections will pale into insignificance when the public understands that subsidising renewables leads to real, indeed major reductions in standard of living.

"For prosperity you need cheap energy; but wind power generally, and offshore wind in particular, is very expensive energy indeed."

Read the entire article here

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