Wind farms: millionaire playgrounds for Green fat cats

ENERGY policy in Great Britain has been a shambles for years. Cowardly governments have turned a blind eye to repeated warnings over prices and supply.

It is not only national and European politicians who continue to pass absurd and counter-productive edicts: during the 2007 Scottish Parliament election campaign, the Labour Party promised that by 2020 Scotland would be producing no less than 40% of its energy from renewable sources. At the time, Scotland was producing some 12% from renewables, almost all of it from hydroelectric schemes built 50 years earlier; hardly anything was coming from the country’s 640 turbines.

To achieve the new target the Scottish government would have to build at least 8,000 more turbines, covering a ridiculous 7% of Scotland’s entire land area. Even these would generate only 3,300 MW of electricity, roughly the same as the coal-fired power station at Didcot in Oxfordshire. All of which only adds weight to the case of the Lewis islanders. Not only will those wind turbines damage the local environment, they will prompt higher energy bills without offsetting carbon emissions all that much.

Yet, assuming that Britain wishes to remain a developed and civilised country, it will always need electricity. With gas and coal supplies dwindling or from the wrong parts of the world, and existing nuclear plants reaching the end of their lifespan – what’s the alternative? Building more nuclear power plants is the best way forward, not just to replace the old stations that will soon go out of service but also to increase the share of nuclear in total energy output.

The positives are overwhelming: cheaper energy prices; negligible carbon emissions; and none of the inconsistencies of wind power. The Chernobyl disaster has been exploited by the green movement for two decades. But the latest generation of nuclear power station is safer, cleaner and more efficient. There’s no reason to hold back.