THEY DON'T GIVE A HOOT FOR LOCAL VIEWS

From Telegraph article: Christopher Booker's Notebook

The announcement last week by Malcom Wicks, the energy minister, that a giant wind farm o­n Romney Marsh in Kent could go ahead, has sent shock waves across the land. The 26 2.5-megawatt turbines proposed by the German-owned nPower for o­ne of the most romantic and unspoiled landscapes in southern England were opposed by every elected authority in the area, including two county councils, two district councils and 12 parish councils; not to mention English Nature, the RSPB and a host of environmentalists.

The 370ft turbines, visible from 20 miles, will cover 1,000 acres of marshland, next to a famous bird reserve, requiring concrete foundations sunk 110 feet into the earth and six and a half miles of new roads, using 50,000 tons of roadstone. But so determined is Malcom Wicks's Department for Trade and Industry to meet its EU target of 10 per cent of energy from "renewable" sources by 2010 that the DTI used an obscure provision of the 1989 Electricity Act to call in the Romney Marsh scheme for decision by a DTI inspector.

The inspector was apparently not troubled by charges that the developers had made wildly misleading claims for their project (both the leader of East Sussex county council and Richard Hartley QC called these "lies").

More significantly, however, he made no attempt to address the argument that the 26 turbines will achieve no net savings in carbon dioxide emissions (because conventional power stations will have to be kept running to cover the three-quarters of the time when the turbines, through inappropriate wind speeds, are not generating); and that they are o­nly viable because their operators will receive £9 million a year in hidden subsidies, paid through inflated electricity bills, o­n top of the £5 million they will get from selling the electricity itself.

The significance of the Romney Marsh decision (announced by Mr Wicks at a meeting of the British Wind Energy Association, the chief lobbyists for the "Great Wind Scam") is that it flags up the Government's determination to force through thousands more turbines - regardless of planning rules or the wishes of local communities - even though they serve no useful purpose, cost us all a fortune and represent o­ne of the most shameless confidence tricks of our time.

Telegraph columnist Christopher Booker's Notebook

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