Tilting at windmills that cost more money than they save

PHIL Dyke’s Saturday essay (Yorkshire Post, May 12) is the usual mix of statistics and emotive, one-sided rubbish that the so called renewables industry uses as propaganda.

Strip away all the grants and dubious statistics and what have you got, a pathetic series of large windmills that no one wants in their line of sight that fail to balance energy output with our cash input!

These onshore wind farms have no place in meeting our energy needs and, just as with solar panels, are sold rather than bought, driven by salesmen fuelled by grants. Take away the grants and it collapses.

The facts are that there are still huge reserves of carbon fuels, yes, even the UK has, and as prices rise to meet growing demand, these will once again become viable. Similarly oil deposits in our wells are still largely untapped, and once again technology is advancing to extract these.

The hysteria blown up about global warming is fact; the facts are not the same on global warming. There are many, many experts who disprove the politically motivated theory on global warming.

The companies who are promoting solar panels and wind farms onshore are simply looking after their own profits and enabling governments to tick boxes. It is a sad state of affairs when we have such stringent planning rules for housing and then people like Bradford Council approve such abuses of our countryside to take place as the Brontë proposals of Banks Renewables – a disgrace.

From: Dr David Hill, Chief Executive, World Innovation Foundation, Huddersfield.

I READ with dismay the one-sided and the misinformation generated wind energy article by Phil Dyke.

But he would say that wind turbines were the best thing since sliced bread, now wouldn’t he, being paid by a wind generating company?

The truth according to “independent” international research is that wind turbines do not generate electricity for between 70-85 per cent of the year as Mr Dyke states, but on average a measly 24.13 per cent, based on a three year cycle.

They do not kick in producing electricity until around 8mph and they cut out at around 33mph on average, not 55mph as Mr Dyke states.

From: Ian Murdoch, Spring Hill, Welbury, Northallerton.

YOU reported on a recent study (Yorkshire Post, May 8) into the so-called benefits of wind energy installations on the economy.

The sponsors of the study, RenewableUK and the Department of Energy and Climate Change, can hardly be regarded as unbiased on such an issue, and the report makes no mention of the costs of securing the jobs and economic benefits claimed, which make very dubious assumptions and are extremely debatable.

What has been the cost of providing this totally unreliable form of energy and how much is every electricity consumer paying each year to support these follies?

Successive Energy Ministers have failed to recognise that the purpose of any form of so-called renewable energy is to save carbon and reduce carbon emissions, and not to create employment, or inject money in to local economies. Clearly, these may be desirable by-products but at what cost?

The real measure of success for wind energy is the actual carbon savings being made, which must be measured in a meaningful way which recognises the current need for back -up generators to run inefficiently.

The Government has totally failed to address this issue, and have recently informed me that they will not answer any further questions on the topic! So much for open Government – presumably, the facts would show this aspect of their “Renewable Energy” policy to be totally ineffective.

The DECC rely on an outdated study which tries to simulate the variability of wind output, when there is clear, ongoing data which shows how much electricity is being produced by wind every half hour. (As I write this, the 4491MW metered by the Grid is producing 186MW – or just over 4 per cent of the capacity).

If there is money to be spent on studying the contribution which wind energy is making, why was it not spent on trying to determine whether wind energy is achieving its prime aim – reducing carbon emissions?