BRITAIN’S beautiful coastline and countryside are scarred by ugly windmills which enrich landlowners and kill wildlife. They cost billions but contribute virtually zero reliable energy to the national grid. Now, at last, after squandering enough cash on them to save us from the double-dip recession, the Tories are fighting to have them stopped.
Chancellor George Osborne wants to give voters the power to block further developments. Only his straw-sucking Lib-Dem Coalition partners stand in the way.
Windmills are so useless that energy firms have to keep conventional power stations ticking over at 60 per cent capacity in case the wind drops – or blows too hard.
Despite building 3,800 of these monstrosities, wind power delivers less than one per cent of Britain’s energy needs. Yet the gigantic subsidies for them punish every household in the land.
Britain’s drive for renewable energy is costing £15BILLION a year — £670 for each home. Cunningly, the cost is kept off taxpayers’ pay slips and plonked on to energy bills so politicians escape the blame.
The case against windmills is clear and damning. But the woolly-headed Lib-Dems want thousands more.
The Treasury is desperate to save money. Even more important is reviving the economy and delivering growth which has been smothered by soaring bills for energy conservation.
David Cameron raised the stakes on carbon capping and joined the campaign for alternative fuels in the pre-slump days when green politics were the rage.
Britain produces a tiny two per cent of the world’s carbon dioxide. Yet while the UK are shutting down power stations, industrial giant China opens a coal-fired plant EVERY WEEK.
George Osborne has begun axing subsidies to the turbine giants who — along with opportunistic landowners — have turned this environmental confidence trick into a goldmine.
Backed by many Tory MPs, he wants to give voters the power to block new turbines.
In a landmark recent decision, plans for four, each as high as the White Cliffs of Dover were barred from the Norfolk Village of Hemsby.
The anti-windmill campaign is backed by sceptics like Mr Osborne’s hero and predecessor as Chancellor, Nigel Lawson. His book An Appeal To Reason argues the world can adapt to climate change without bankrupting economies.
He is supported by, among others, Prince Phillip, a lifelong environmental campaigner, who has denounced wind farms as “a fairy tale, absolutely useless”.
The Chancellor should now open up for reappraisal every measure planned by Whitehall to lumber taxpayers and employers with costs that kill jobs and impoverish families.
The Green view
By BEN JACKSON, Environment Editor
WE should be aghast at the price of gas. It has risen seven per cent a year for a decade and is now so high that most UK power stations have moved back to burning coal to keep the price down for skint consumers.
Even UK gas production is in decline, falling 15 per cent last year, with now more than half the gas we use coming from abroad.
Yet the true cost of wind energy is just 2p a day to every UK home, and dropping as technology advances.
CBI chief John Cridland argues that if the UK led the way with green policies, it could soon be worth £120billion a year to the country.
Wind and nuclear power may be more expensive now, but the price of fossil fuels – both to us and the environment – is going one way.