Turbines remain ugly and crude so capture carbon instead

From: R Firth, Woodgarth Court, Campsall, Doncaster.

THE story on the front page of your paper (Yorkshire Post, August 10) detailing the plea,by Greg Knight MP for a freeze on further planning applications for on-shore wind farms in East Yorkshire needs to be followed up by MPs, district and parish councillors throughout the region in a determined attempt to halt all such applications.

Experience of the existing turbines has shown them to be not only a massive blight on our landscapes but also a very unreliable and expensive way of generating electricity. To the wind farm applicants, the granting of planning permission is akin to winning the lottery without having to buy a ticket as we, the taxpayers, have to subsidise them through inflated energy bills and the climate levy.

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No wonder the Government is looking at a reduction of 10 per cent in the subsidy paid with the Treasury seeking a 25 per cent reduction.

The latter should be introduced at once, merely as a starter in view of the several alternatives coming through to produce low-carbon energy and the major amendments to existing bulk energy suppliers to greatly reduce carbon emissions.

Your paper revealed recently that the Don Valley Power Project’s Carbon Capture 
Scheme had been judged by the EU as the best in Europe and has granted it a further £250m to go with its earlier £160m, as well as the firm commitments from Samsung and BOC to take stakes in DVPP based at Hatfield, where decades of coal supplies are readily accessible.

In a letter from the DECC in July, I was told: “The Government is absolutely committed to the development of CCS. The Government believes it is an exciting technology that can de-carbonise coal and gas-fired power stations and large industrial emitters, allowing them to play a crucial part in the UK’s low carbon future.”

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After giving details of the UK CCS road map, the letter goes on to say: “The UK is poised to be a world leader in this new industry which could be worth 
as much as £6.5bn a year to the UK economy by the late 2020s. We want to maximise opportunities for green jobs and green growth on the journey to a low carbon economy, potentially supporting 100,000 jobs in this sector by the end of the next decade.”

While, of course, this project will have to be cost-competitive, it is an avenue well worth pursuing and, coupled with the giant strides being made at Drax and Ferrybridge on greatly reducing carbon emissions and the building of replacement nuclear stations, we should be able to look forward to lower energy costs and ensure that our landscapes are not marred by further turbines.