UK environmentalists tilt at windmills
A CONTROVERSY is raging in the UK about the setting up of windmills in the countryside. Some conservationists contend they spoil the landscape and are uneconomic, while others refute these allegations and say windmills are the cleanest source of energy.
The debate heated up when British environment minister John Gummer overturned the decision of a local council in Cornwall to authorise a wind farm near Truro. Windmills, 23 of them in fact, have also dotted the skyline in Halifax. Similar projects in Ovenden Moor, Kirby Moor and Cemmaes are also awaiting approval.
"Forests of these infernal contraptions are springing up on our pristine Pennine moors," wrote Bernard Ingham, member of a conservation group called Country Guardian, in The Hebden Bridge Times. David Lascelles, writing in The Financial Times, says wind power is uneconomic, environmentally intrusive and unnecessary. He says it costs 12 pence to produce a kilowatt-hour of wind power, whereas households pay only 8 pence for electricity. As a result, wind power has received a subsidy of approximately L5 million to date in the UK. Lascelles adds that wind power is also unnecessary as the country's power generation capacity currently exceeds demand by 30 per cent.
Responding to Lascelles' article, Michael Grubb, the head of the energy and environment programme of the Royal Institute of International Affairs, wrote that if there was excess generation capacity, no additional capacity should be built even in other sectors of energy generation. He added that the contribution of wind power to the total energy production was much more than 10 per cent because its environmental benefit would be much larger.
A letter from members of the British Energy Association said that only 1,200 sq km -- 0.3 per cent of the country's land area -- would be required to generate 10 per cent of the total electricity. They add that as wind turbines require less than one per cent of the area in which they are sited, actual land usage would be less than 12 sq km.