TORIES SUPPORT WIND POWER

Following on from our last blog, which indicated that the UK government is fully expecting to see a massive increase in renewables over the next nine years, news has come in which should crush the hopes of the selfish nimbies.

Charles Hendry, Minister for Energy in the coalition government, has defended onshore wind power in a Commons debate.

The same Charles Hendry reaffirmed in July of this year that the government's guidelines on noise - ETSU-R-97 - remained firmly in place. These guidelines have been repeatedly questioned by desperate nimbies and even, it would seem, by officers at Wychavon District Council (they don't really have the right to question government guidelines), but all the same, the government is sticking to them.

Now, Hendry has announced that onshore wind power remains a key factor in the move towards a low carbon economy. Another Tory MP had made the strange remark that onshore windfarms divert resources away from 'other renewables that do work and that people like'. Yes - a very strange remark, given that onshore windfarms demonstrably do work and, as far as all polls have shown, people generally like them. As usual, an MP was pursuing a nimby argument that certain people faced with the prospect of a windfarm nearby suddenly decide that they don't like them, as well as trying to pretend that they don't work.

But Charles Hendry came up with a very interesting answer to this:

Sizewell B, one of our more recent nuclear power stations, has been out of operation for seven months. In that time, it did not produce a single unit of electricity, but our wind system produced 1.8 TWh of electricity, the equivalent of the annual consumption of 400,000 homes.

Hendry acknowledged that wind power can fluctuate, but given that the National Grid has published several reports which indicate that this is not a problem, and a good 40% of our electricity could be provided by variable sources, like wind power, before we begin to encounter any real problems, he quite rightly brushed the issue aside. 'There are only a few hours when [turbines] are not generating', Hendry announced. 'Recent figures show that they have been producing 10% [of our total energy consumption].'

So, it's all looking pretty grim for the narrow-minded and self-centred nookies of Lench. The government is backing wind power - including onshore wind power - all the way. And for a very good reason.

We need it. It does the job. And it would be criminal if we gave up on this sensible and elegant solution to our problems, just because a few dishonest nimbies kick up a totally unreasonable fuss about something in a field which they don't own anyway.