Thursday, 27th October 2011
Windfarms are “national follies”, says Euro MP
The Scottish Government's renewable energy policy and reliance on wind farms is creating a rural landscape of expensive, modern-day architectural follies with little or no practical benefit to the environment.
This is the view that will be expressed by Scottish Conservative Euro MP Struan Stevenson at an anti-windfarm protest meeting in Inverness tomorrow night (Friday 28th October).
The meeting will be held in the Royal Highland Hotel in Station Square, Inverness and is open to the public from 19.00 hrs.
Speaking ahead of his appearance in Inverness, Struan Stevenson said:
“Giant, industrial wind turbines are the modern day equivalent of architectural national follies like McCaig's Tower in Oban, or the National Monument on Calton Hill in Edinburgh. And like those expensive vanity projects, windfarms serve no practical purpose, yet they certainly aren’t redeemed by the aesthetic merits of their 19th century predecessors.
“All they do is force up electricity bills, driving over a million Scots into fuel poverty, creating a rising tide of bankruptcies, trashing Scotland's unique landscape, while failing to reduce carbon emissions.”
He added:
"The Scottish Government badly needs to look at embracing a wider, more economically and environmentally sustainable energy mix. The long-term generating costs for nuclear power, including safe storage of waste and final de-commissioning, are estimated at around £68 per MW hour. On-shore wind is considerably more expensive at £86 per MW hour and off-shore wind is completely out of the park at a humungous £112 per MW hour. Remember that carbon-zero nuclear power is 100% reliable, while wind turbines only operate for around 22% of their active life and require baseload backup, to ensure the lights don’t go out.
"In Scotland, where the SNP will not permit new nuclear capacity to be built, we will have to rely on high carbon gas and coal plants for backup, without even the opportunity to capture and store carbon, now that the experimental CCS project at Longannet has been abandoned because of costs. So the idiocy of the entire policy is sharply exposed."
ENDS
Notes to Editor
1. Struan Stevenson is a Conservative Euro MP for Scotland. He is President of the Climate Change, Biodiversity & Sustainable Development Intergroup of more than 200 MEPs.
2. The meeting in Inverness is being organised and chaired by Independent Highland Councillor, Jim Crawford. It will be held at the Royal Highland Hotel in Station Square, Inverness, at 19.00 hrs.
3. For further information, please contact:
Peter Smyth
Indigo
peter@indigopr.com
Tel: 0131 554 1146
Mob: 07766 166 637
