"Horror" At Ministerial Approval Of Romney Marsh Wind Farm

The Energy Minister, Malcolm Wicks, will today use a speech to the British Wind Energy Association, the trade lobby of the wind industry, to announce that he has granted approval to the 26 turbine industrial wind power station to be built on the historic Romney Marshes at Cheyne Court, in an area of designated high ecological value, and only 30ft from a Site of Special Scientific Interest.

The application was opposed by a large majority of local people, district and county councils, English Nature, RSPB, Rye Harbour Nature Reserve, Sussex Wildlife Trust, Kent Wildlife Trust and many other environmental organisations who today expressed their horror at the decision.

This proposal, though physically gigantic, would generate only a miniscule 0.0004 of UK electricity. Yet it will cost the UK electricity consumer nearly £7 million a year in consumer subsidy to the wind developer.

Due to the fickle nature of wind, the 60 MW of generation at Cheyne Court will be "non-firm" and will not replace a single MW of the UK’s fossil fuelled generating capacity, a point richly confirmed by recent data from E.ON Netz in Germany which shows that the "capacity credit" of wind is effectively zero.

It should be obvious that the costs, ecological and financial, of the Romney Marsh wind farm are vastly out of proportion to its benefits.
Campbell Dunford, CEO of REF said: "The UK is a johnny-come-lately to renewables, but instead of learning from the experience of our path-finding European neighbours, where large-scale onshore wind power has been tried and found to be very bad value for money in the fight against climate change, we are persisting with a policy of crude and indiscriminate subsidy which is unjustifiably expensive for the consumer, and produces results which are simply inadequate as climate change mitigation.

If Mr Wicks believes that the current renewables policy offers an economically compelling example to the developing world he is gravely mistaken."