Letters: Damaging view of wind-farm policy

Published on Saturday 7 January 2012 04:59

CONSERVATIONISTS may not appreciate that windmills are greedy consumers of some of the most scarce and exotic natural resources, such as neodymium and other rare earths.

Neodymium provides the super-strong magnets of the windmills’ generators. Requirements vary from 25 kilo for each megawatt of power generation capacity to 250kg/MW.

The nominal installed windmill capacity in UK is now 5.9 gigawatts and this is expected to rise to 16GW within ten years. Thus, UK consumption of neodymium could range from 400,000 tonnes to as much as four million tonnes, or half the world’s reserves. The same rare earth is also used in the motors of electric vehicles, supposedly a “green” form of transport.

By the way, neodymium burns enthusiastically at only 150C and, like an incendiary bomb, is very difficult to extinguish. As we have seen recently, windmills tend to explode and one must wonder about electric cars.

The US Department of Energy has already issued a warning that “Supply challenges for five rare earth metals (dysprosium, neodymium, terbium, europium and yttrium) may affect clean energy technology deployment in the years ahead”.

Add to this devastation of some of the world’s more exotic and irreplaceable resources, the effect that windmills have in our parlous balance of trade position. Windmills are no longer manufactured in UK and few of the construction workforces are locals. So where is the boost to the economy from the green industry?

Mainly foreign capital supports this industry, so the subsidies and profits flow abroad – another drain on our economy and no help for our sovereign debt. But worse than that, operators are being paid not to produce.

Scotsman readers will recollect the £1.2 million paid to the Norwegian company that owns 60 windmills in the Borders for not generating. This was no isolated case; there were nearly 40 such events in the first nine months of 2011 and just under £7m was paid to 17 operators to shut down their farms. The scale and frequency of this scandalous waste of our money will increase as the number and scale of wind farms increases over the next ten years.

A recent paper from the Adam Smith Institute reiterates the conclusions of the David Hume Institute paper of 2004 to the effect that renewables, mainly windmills, can never replace coal, gas and nuclear, that they cannot ever be competitive in an unrigged market, that government intervention will lead to higher energy costs and jeopardise security of supply and that, because of the need for standby fossil fuelled generation, renewables will do little to reduce carbon emissions and fossil fuel use.

We may forget about the irreparable damage done to our precious rural environment and the misery windmills inflict on those who live nearby them, but we shall be reminded of this purblind energy policy every time we look at our energy bills.

Fenton Robb 

North Street

Eyemouth

I AM not convinced that Fergus Ewing’s energy policy is sound (Letters, 5 January). I am even less impressed with his curiously conflicting role also as tourism minister. At a Scotsman Conference on the Economics of Renewables Mr Ewing was asked if there was a conflict of interest. He said Scotland was holding its own in tourism through difficult times. He said some wind farms were a tourist attraction in their own right.

Whitelee wind farm on the edge of Glasgow was singled out. It has been visited by thousands of schoolchildren, curious locals, mountain bikers etc but how many people in the emerging tourist markets are putting Whitelee wind farm in the top 100 places one must see before one dies? It is ludicrous if it wasn’t a tragedy for Scotland’s tourism industry.

Our tourism statistics show a massive drop in overseas visitors. Between 2006 and 2010 overseas tourists to Scotland dropped 14 per cent (Visit Scotland).

In the first half of 2011, Scotland had an 8 per cent drop in overseas visitors and a 17 per cent drop in their spending. The UK as a whole had an increase of 5 per cent in visitors and spend. The UK is second bottom in an EU table of percentage change from 2009 to 2010 in number of nights spent by non-residents in hotels and similar establishments. Is this “holding our own” even within UK let alone the EU?

This drop is not the same for other countries. The comparative figures for Switzerland from 2006 to 2010 is a 0.5 per cent drop in overseas visitors. This has not been because Switzerland has become relatively cheaper, as we have. In 2010 the comparative price level index in the hotel and restaurant sector in Switzerland was an eye watering 40.9 per cent higher than the EU27.

The Swiss have preserved their tourist industry by preserving their greatest asset, its scenery. We have sacrificed ours to the wind-farm lobby and how much easier that has been with the combined ministry of energy and tourism since 2007.

Wake up Scotland – we are losing long-term tourism jobs at the expense of short-term construction jobs in the wind-farm industry and the destruction of our greatest asset.

Celia Hobbs

Peebles Road

Penicuik

Midlothian

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THX1138

Saturday, January 7, 2012 at 08:05 PM

I'm the last person to defend wind turbines, but I like to object to them on the basis of facts - the opening paragraphs of Fenton Robb's letter is scientific claptrap. It's hard enough fighting the stupidity of windfarms without giving the turbine promoters sticks to beat us with. True, neodymium metal burns relatively easily, like aluminium, but it's not in a turbine AS the metal, it's there as the Nd2Fe14B alloy, which has nothing like the properties of the element. Idiot boy then assumes that the name, 'rare earths', means that they are rare - they are NOT. They are plentiful in the Earth's crust, but concentrated ores only exist in limited areas. As they are often associated with titanium deposits, there is a future in extracting them from titanium mining wastes. The phrase used by the US was supply 'challenges', not 'failure', and relates to an over-reliance on Chinese producers after the USA closed their Lanthanide (rare earth) mines when Chinese rare-earth prices were unsustainably low.

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Ron Greer

Saturday, January 7, 2012 at 06:08 PM

7 The NIMBY accusation won't work Sam as more and more people know that windfarms do not produce, dependable, predictable and viable amounts of power, that will in any way substantively reduce Scotland's already irrelevant contribution to world CO2 levels and climate change. Whether it is Alex Salmond or Chris Huhne promulgating the same folly is not relevant.

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Brenda H

Saturday, January 7, 2012 at 04:34 PM

The total figure paid to windfarm operators in Scotland to shut down during 2011 was over £12m. most of which went abroad. They are paid more to shut down than they are to generate and what's more they name their price!

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samcoldstream

Saturday, January 7, 2012 at 12:20 PM

Comment removed by moderator

6

nabodican

Saturday, January 7, 2012 at 12:02 PM

Windfarms as tourist attractions is one of the oldest lies in the book, all have failed. Swaffam, Delabole, Cold Northcott etc. Take away the schoolchildren who are forced to go to Whitelee and then see what is left. The only reason Whitlee gets away with it is because it is next to East Kilbride. It is also one of the reasons that surveys purporting to show that Scottish people love windfarms is a lie, they use it to scale the results such that the nearer you live to a windfarm the less your opinion counted. An interesting point was raised about the fire risk of electric vehicles, recently at a motorcycle race meeting they had a demonstration electric bike which crashed and went on fire, five marshals with fire extinguishers could not put the fire out, they had to let it burn. Electric vehicles are the most dangerous on the road yet this is what the government want us to drive. When will this green lunacy end.

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norfolkboy14

Saturday, January 7, 2012 at 10:45 AM

Are you disillusioned by rising electricity prices, over dependence on the "green" dream [especially uneconomical and inefficient wind farms] and the destruction of our countryside then please register your objection on http:epetitions.direct.gov.ukpetitions22958 or google"wind petition norfolk" for a quick link. Please get your friends to sign up too.

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Back To The Future

Saturday, January 7, 2012 at 09:20 AM

Two first class and well structured letters - well done! ...... Now wait for the ignorant and derisory outpourings from the supporters of these useless monstrosities.

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gus1940

Saturday, January 7, 2012 at 08:57 AM

Why is my perfectly reasonable non-inflamatory question at #2 subject to the curse of 'Pending Moderation' which in effect means permanent rejection.

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gus1940

Saturday, January 7, 2012 at 08:54 AM

Comment removed by moderator

1

cajwbroomhill

Saturday, January 7, 2012 at 06:57 AM

The energy policies of the SNP, barely opposed by any opposition ,are madness, which they share with those of the Coalition, with the small difference that, in the latter's case, a bit more room is left for alternatives.Our nation's future is at stake here.

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