An MP has backed campaigners fighting to stop a wind turbine being built close to an historic site near Lichfield.
The plans would see the turbine built near the Letoceum Roman site in Wall.
But Christopher Pincher MP – whose Tamworth constituency covers the area – believes financial as well as heritage reasons mean the proposals should not go ahead.
“I support renewable, clean energy,” he explained. “However, I do have concerns about the economic viability of many on-shore wind turbines, including the proposal for Wall.
“The turbines are subsidised with money from the pockets of the hard-working families whose homes will be blighted by this massive windmill.
“Wall is a beautiful part of the world and it should not be spoilt by a turbine when it is not clear that on-shore wind power built by foreign companies provides any significant economic benefit to Britain nor when carbon-emitting gas-fired power stations have to sit in reserve to switch on when the wind does not blow.”
Mr Pincher was one of 105 MPs who recently wrote to the Prime Minister calling for a dramatic cut to the subsidy handed out to on-shore wind farm projects.
I always find it amazing when the Hysteria Brigade get all panicky over issues such as this. They say turbines will blight their lives and are an eyesore yet none of them seem to notice the web of 20000 electricity pylons which span the countryside, many of them in residential areas.
No one seems to mind the 200 year old windmills. Just the new ones. I’m all for them. Only thing I’d do is encourage the owners / designers to make them more radical, more noticeable. Really make a statement with them.
This really is nonsense on stilts from Mr Pincher. He starts by stating that he is in favour of clean, renewable energy but then immediately goes on to reject what both Government and independent studies have demonstrated to be the cheapest, most cost effective method of producing this i.e. onshore wind.
His emotive language about hard working families ignores the fact that – according to OFGEM – the additional cost of subsidies for onshore wind on the average energy bill is less than £5 per year, while rising gas prices and energy company profits have sent bills soaring.
It also ignores the fact that the costs of dealing with the consequences of climate change are going to vastly outweigh the costs of the short-term investment needed to switch to clean energy.
Finally he contradicts himself by objecting to wind turbines because they lead to carbon-emitting gas power stations being shut down. Phew!
don’t forget our MP is just as blinkered on this subject
A few of points:
1) Pylons are fixed, non-moving structures and whilst ugly they have no motion allowing them to “blend in” to an extent if you’re not looking right at them, the spinning nature of bright white wind turbines makes them stand out from still rural surroundings, and attract (distract?) the eye.
2) Pylons do not emit sound – wind turbines do, you might say not very much, but consider that most turbines tend to be planned in quiet rural areas, then the acceptable sound level needs to be considered relatively, otherwise the repetitive swish will be dominant over very low background levels. I don’t think it’s unreasonable for people to be unhappy about increased artifical noise levels where they live, that will continue during the night, when already low background noise levels become even quieter. Maybe they’d be better off built in and around cities where the constant background noise will mask them out, and the landscape is already man-made.
3) I don’t know of any 200 year old windmills that are anywhere near as high as modern wind turbines, some of them really are huge.
4) I don’t see Pinchers point about gas-fired power stations being a contradiction. He’s saying that due to wind-turbines not generating power all the time then you still need dirty fuels as a back up to kick in when the wind’s not blowing – so how worthwhile are they really if they can’t meet demand in their own right? Not much of a point, because he should look at it the other way round and see that any time wind is generating electricity is a reduction of emissions from the dirty sources that would be being used 100% of the time without wind.
Just a few quick observations on your thread which shows the importance of and interest in energy. First, it’s not true to say that studies show that wind is the cheapest form of clean energy. That particular accolade goes to nuclear. Both DECC and the CCC agree that nuclear generation costs about £73 per Megawatt hour whilst wind (onshore) currently sits at over £100. Second, my point about redundancy is a bit more pointed than perhaps Joe thinks: gas-fired power stations are at their most efficient when running continuously at “full speed” – a bit like a car engine on a motorway. Continually dialling them up and down to cope with the exigencies of windless periods in times of high demand makes them much less efficient – more carbon is emitted and the life span of the facility is reduced which in itself has a carbon price. Looked at like this wind turbines are much less green than supposed. Fred Udo has done a lot of research on this building on the physics of Betz in the C20th.
CCC (Commmittee on Climate Change)report says that onshore wind costs are ‘comparable with nuclear’. DECC study predicts that onshore wind will shortly become cheaper than nuclear.
In response to Mr Pincher:
Power generation ramps up and down all the time in response to changing demand – there is nothing new in wind.
There is clear evidence from circumstances where there is high penetration of wind power (particularly the US) that significant CO2 reductions have occurred – wind generally replaces the most carbon intensive plant (usually coal). See for instance http://s.coop/xa2l