WAG - Windfarm Action Group - the growing blight on the good earth ☯
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Ethical Storm over Windfarm Support Letters - Shetland
EXCLUSIVE: David Ross, Highland Correspondent
The Herald 19 Nov 2010
A Major windfarm developer has been accused of questionable ethics in using letter- generating software to help boost public support for its proposals on Shetland.
Viking Energy, the result of a partnership between Shetland Islands Council and Scottish and Southern Energy, wants to build a 127-turbine windfarm. It claims the scheme will generate £23 million a year for the community, create jobs and help maintain the high level of social provision in the islands, long after money from North Sea oil runs out.However, many islanders believe that, with turbines of up to 476ft – higher than Orkney’s Old Man of Hoy – their landscape will be blighted and money wasted on a project whose benefits have been grossly overestimated and costs underplayed.The project has fiercely divided island opinion ahead of today’s deadline for public submissions, with both sides urging residents to make their view known.
It has now emerged that a tick of a box on the Viking website will instantly generate a carefully worded letter of support to send to the Scottish Government.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE
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The Herald 19 Nov 2010
A Major windfarm developer has been accused of questionable ethics in using letter- generating software to help boost public support for its proposals on Shetland.
Viking Energy, the result of a partnership between Shetland Islands Council and Scottish and Southern Energy, wants to build a 127-turbine windfarm. It claims the scheme will generate £23 million a year for the community, create jobs and help maintain the high level of social provision in the islands, long after money from North Sea oil runs out.However, many islanders believe that, with turbines of up to 476ft – higher than Orkney’s Old Man of Hoy – their landscape will be blighted and money wasted on a project whose benefits have been grossly overestimated and costs underplayed.The project has fiercely divided island opinion ahead of today’s deadline for public submissions, with both sides urging residents to make their view known.
It has now emerged that a tick of a box on the Viking website will instantly generate a carefully worded letter of support to send to the Scottish Government.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE
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The Times Nov 25th 2010 by Matt Ridley
For a glimpse of a truly scary future dependent on volatile suppliers look no farther than Mr (Chris) Huhne’s favoured approach, the dash for wind. Every wind turbine has a magnet made of a metal called neodymium. There are 2.5 tonnes of it in each of the behemoths that have just gone up to spoil my view in Northumberland. The mining and refining of neodymium is so dirty (involving repeated boiling in acid, with radioactive thorium as a waste product), that only one country does it: China. This year it flexed its trade muscles and briefly stopped exporting neodymium from its inner Mongolian mines. How’s that for dangerous reliance on a volatile foreign supply?
Orders for wind turbines to fall by 93%, energy experts predict
- Wind power capacity to slump from 1,368Mw to 90Mw in 2013?
- Ministers to announce overhaul of energy market this month
‘Kintyre wind farm firm goes bust’ BBC News, 26 October, 2010.
‘A wind turbine manufacturer which received £10m from the Scottish government to safeguard jobs in 2009 has gone bust.
‘The Danish company Skykon, which took over the Vestas wind turbine factory in Kintyre last year, has announced it is suspending payments to its creditors.
‘The Danish company Skykon, which took over the Vestas wind turbine factory in Kintyre last year, has announced it is suspending payments to its creditors.
UK Firms are paid to shut down wind farms when the wind is blowing
Wind farm companies are to be paid not to produce electricity when the wind is blowing.
The first successful test shut down of wind farms took place on May 30th 2010. Scottish Power received £13,000 for closing down two farms for a little over an hour on 30 May at about five in the morning.
Read Robert Mendick's full article from The Telegraph HERE
The first successful test shut down of wind farms took place on May 30th 2010. Scottish Power received £13,000 for closing down two farms for a little over an hour on 30 May at about five in the morning.
Read Robert Mendick's full article from The Telegraph HERE
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USA
White House memo on Renewable Energy Loan Guarantees and Grants October 25, 2010 This explosive memo authored by White House advisers Carol Browner, Ron Klain, and Larry Summers explains how "double-dipping" by wind developers is resulting in the total government subsidy for loan guarantee recipients exceeding 60% against small private equity, as low as 10%. The appendix included with the memo is excerpted below. The full memo can be accessed by selecting the underlined link above.
