Comments on: MP Says We Don’t Want Wind Turbines Near our Homes

By: Clive Burke

Clive Burke — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:34:17 +0000

Good Evening All!

I think it is more important to push for a ‘Ministry for Renewable Energy’ that has the power to allow wind farms etc. to built as long as they meet a set of standard conditions, planning for wind projects should take 12 weeks, not the 12 years(!!) it took to get the Westmill community (paid for by investors not government) wind project built -twice as long as the Sizewell B atomic power station. We know climate change is happening, but vested interests are derailing our move towards renewable energy using false pretenses in order to satisfy their own hidden agendas, for instance constantly claiming that turbines consume more energy in their construction then they ever produce, when they actually produce up to 80 times the energy they consume in their construction, including all the concrete used in the foundations. These are drastic times and we need drastic action. We’d have never have won the last war if we’d had a 12 year planning battle every time we needed to put up a barrage balloon.

Derailing the all too successful scheming, lying, NIMBY bandwagon is the first place we need to start to stop the demonizing of wind power and secure enough cheap, plentiful and limitless clean energy for the immediate future to power at least 20 percent of our needs, and maybe much more as ’smart metering’ and other technologies kick in.

Clive – Energy Security Campaigner.

By: Mick Cooper

Mick Cooper — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:00:24 +0000

There’s a lot of misinformation doing the rounds about wind farms. Generally this emanates from people who ‘have it all’ in the sense that they tend to live in nice places and draw their power from fossil or nuclear sources located elsewhere. Typical NIMBY’s they want this to continue. So much so that they are prepared to convince themselves, against an overwhelming body of evidence, that climate change is not happening. That scientists are deliberately misleading. You know the thing: the Earth has begun to cool, what about the Medieval warm period, etc. They cannot accept that, despite periodic fluctuations, there is a well-established warming trend which follows almost exactly the increase in fossil fuel production since the Industrial Revolution and the massive growth in the human population that industrialisation made possible. They also cannot seem to get the idea that pumping CO2 into the atmosphere is an act of pollution.

By: Vicky Portwain

Vicky Portwain — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:59:45 +0000

Nick – your comment is misleading. SPP6 does not say wind farms cannot be within 2km of a village. Scotland follows the same guidelines as England when it comes to the distance between houses and turbines which is what this is about.

By: Nick

Nick — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 01:18:15 +0000

Totally biased once again. It very strange how you quote a survey carried out by the scotish executive where in Scotland they have such a rule. SPP6 states windfarms cant be within 2km from the edge of a village

By: Aeolus

Aeolus — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 14:47:09 +0000

Peter Luff is my local MP. His ill-considered parliamentary manoeuvre has effectively been dictated by a small but vociferous protest group – ‘Vale Villagers Against Scottish Power’ – who have been campaigning against plans by ScottishPower Renewables to develop a five-turbine windfarm at Lenchwick in Worcestershire.

The campaign group has consistently misrepresented the facts about modern windfarms, causing immense distress and anxiety in the local villages. Peter Luff has, I believe, misread the local situation. So aggressive have the nimbies been that the many who support the windfarm development in the area have felt obliged to keep their heads down. Thus, Luff imagines that he is representing the views of the majority of his constituents in raising the issue of the utterly unworkable, unnecessary and retrograde minimum distance rule.

What Peter Luff has failed to realise is that there is plenty of support in the local area for the windfarm, and that his gesture in parliament supports a minority of recently-arrived residents who are chiefly concerned about property investments.

Last December, Peter Luff warned that the UK would face electricity blackouts if a proper energy strategy wasn’t urgently implemented. Now he’s doing his bit to prevent onshore windfarm developments going ahead. So much for coherence and consistency!