I agree with constituents who have written urging a minimum distance to be set between any new windfarm and residential areas. I have taken this up directly with the Minister, Charles Hendry. I have written to the department, and have asked the Minister in a meeting to change the law to enforce such a gap. He has not so far agreed to this proposal. In the meantime I urge our local Councils to use their planning powers to veto windfarms that are too close to homes, as Wokingham recently did.
June 7, 2011
Maybe the Climate Change department could put a cap on all windfarms until the technology has been proven to be more efficient and can compete, without subsidies, with conventional sources of energy.
June 8, 2011
There have been two articles in the telegraph in the last week concerning climate change and windmills.
The first article highlighted climate experts who had identified that there had been a reduction in solar activity in the last decade or so and this had directly influenced the passage of our jet streams. This in turn had impacted the weather. As you know patterns of weather are called climates that have changed over millenia since the beginning of time. There was no mention of CO2 in this article. However, CO2 makes up 0.036%, yes 0.036%, of the Earths atmosphere. It is a naturally occurring non poisenous trace gas that comes from volcanoes, our oceans, animal species, fossil fuels and feeds plant life. Man’s contribution through burning fossil fuel is minimal. Yet we have our madcap Global Warming scientists/politicians exaggerating facts to meet their required proof that we are causing global warming/now climate change as there has been no warming for over a decade. This is now almost a religion. Successive Governments claim that the science is proven. It is not but oil/carbon trading/air travel is an excellent way to raise revenue. However as such we are building windmills that are heavilly subsidised by utility bills (hidden away in the bill), that actually don’t work the majority of the time or if it is too windy or freezing cold with no wind! Government is creating carbon trading to disadvantage our industries and our competitors are laughing at us. They are also an awful eyesore.
Whilst it is right that we should be weaned off of oil, the arguments relating to green issues just don’t stack up. Oil is an expensive finite resource that will run out in due course or be prohibitably expensive. We should be considering sustainable solutions such as geothermal technology, barrages(Severn), nucleur, clean coal or other technologies to replace oil.
This great con will out in due course.
June 8, 2011
Hydrogen is the most abundant fuel in the universe. We can crack it from Water using Nuclear generated eletricity. If you burn Hydrogen the waste product is water. Its no more difficult to control than is LPG.
Problem solved.
June 8, 2011
I wholeheartedy agree with both comments.
Why not add stopping the promoters from making false claims, examining the health factors associated with wind-turbines and FULLY checking all the aspects regarding their “green” credentials? The Minister may find a few surprises.
June 8, 2011
Another particularly British mistake is to put our largest windfarms at sea. This doubles the cost and must make them even more unreliable, vulnerable to storms and difficult to maintain. The Portuguese just bribe the locals and they put up with the noise quite happily. Most of our wind is created while we argue about them.