Big step for wind plans
6:00am Friday 6th April 2007
Comments (1)THE prospect of a host of new wind farms springing up around Somerset moved a step closer this week, after Somerset County Council invited a number of developers to bid for the contract.
The Mercury revealed last summer how the council had planned to try to meet green energy targets by allowing wind farms to be built on land within the County Farm Estate.
Sites under preliminary consideration included land on the Quantock Hills, the Sedgemoor battle site, Bridgwater, Woolavington, Chilton Polden and the Huntspill Levels.
The idea came closer to reality this week, when the council selected a number of firms to submit tenders for the developments, with a final decision due later this summer.
Exact sites will then be finalised before building commences, with the aim of producing 11-15% of the county's electricity from renewable sources as soon as 2010.
Somerset's renewable energy officer Ian Bright told the Mercury that the council is optimistic the project will proceed and be successful.
He said: "This project has attracted bids of the very highest quality and that reflects the interest generated by the Somerset Wind Energy Initiative.
"We must now move towards the appointment of a company which can deliver to our exacting requirements, with particular reference to the public consultation that is central to the initiative."
The successful bidder will carry out a comprehensive study of the potential sites, including an extensive public consultation, which will take into account criteria like wind speed, landscape and proximity to houses, roads and the national grid.
Whichever company is successful will then take planning applications to the local authority.
Jonathon Porritt, chairman of the influential UK Sustainable Development Commission, has also backed the initiative.
He said: "This is an excellent scheme and I commend Somerset County Council's far-sightedness and resolution in bringing it forward.
"I think we all now understand that climate change is for real and will affect all of us, with increasingly serious impacts over time.
"Renewable energy has a critical role to play in reducing emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and wind power is a cost-effective, tried and tested element in the renewables portfolio.
"People in Somerset should be delighted."
Wind farms could be springing up across Somerset
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Lou, says...
2:53pm Fri 6 Apr 07
"Renewable energy has a critical role to play in reducing emissions of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and wind power is a cost-effective, tried and tested element in the renewables portfolio."
I'm not sure how Mr. Bright can make such a laughable assertion in face of several years of honest-to-goodnes, real-world data from the UK, Denmark and Germany; it casts doubt on his credibility right at the start, or perhaps he hasn't familiarised himself with the data--which doesn't augur well, either.
In a sense, Mr. Bright IS correct: wind power has been 'tried', and it has been 'tested'--and found badly wanting.
Wind energy has not reduced CO2 emissions anywhere, ever. Denmark's CO2 emissions have gone UP, not down--and Denmark is the most wind-friendly country on the planet. So has Germany's. So has the UK's. Perhaps--since Mr. Bright has made the assertion that it does--he could tell us all just where and when wind power has done so? Which power stations have been shut down or throttled back? Indeed, if one adds all the claimed CO2 savings from all the UK wind developments together, you find that (even assuming such savings occurred; they don't) a simple regime of turning off unused bulbs in your home would save at least as much CO2 per year. Me, I'd rather see us turn off the lights as we left our sitting rooms, than see windmills all over the hills. Costs less, and you don't destroy the countryside, kill birds, or give tons of taxpayer pounds to fat-cat developers.
As for being 'cost-effective', wind electricity is roughly 2.5 times as expensive as conventional, mainly because conventional plants continue to run in the background as usual. I understand that Mr. Bright is a Council official, so this may in his world be 'cost-effective'.
So, Mr. Bright, you would like to saddle us with a technology which won't result in any CO2 savings, will cost a lot more than regular electricity, and will tear up the countryside when we could be spending funds on far more effective technologies such as tidal or wave.
But I forget--local councils wouldn't get, ahem, 'community development funds' (is that the name? Hm. Times change) from tidal or wave developments, now would they?
I expect the developers to come out with the equally risible assertions that 'tourists love wind farms', and 'property values aren't affected', too. Just wait a bit...
In fact, given the objective, copious evidence that wind farms are not just useless, but an actual harm, why would anyone want them other than for the taxpayer-supplied subsidy, and...and...never mind!