World’s largest wind farm planned
- 31st March 2012
- Comments (6)
The world’s biggest wind farm is being planned off England’s south coast. The development comprises 200 turbines, each the height of a skyscraper and spread over an area the size of Glasgow.
The planned wind farm, which is three to four times bigger than any previously built, is expected to earn its Dutch owners Eneco more than a quarter of a billion pounds a year in subsidies alone.
The scheme has already attracted widespread criticism with opponents claiming it will ruin coastal views for generations to come. The Royal Yacht Squadron, the world’s most prestigious sailing club whose patron is the Queen and which is headed by the Duke of Edinburgh, is also orchestrating a campaign against it.
It fears the wind farm could impact on the main sailing route from the Isle of Wight to the south west, including the Fastnet Race, which starts in Cowes and finishes in Plymouth.
Eneco has submitted notice of its plans – in a 173-page report – to a special Government body set up to deal with ‘national significant’ infrastructure projects.
Source: Telegraph online
Comments (6)
Anthony Shall on 10th April 2012
Is it not true that wind farms are not economically viable?If so as the are a noisey eyesore,what good are they?
Paul Hickman on 10th April 2012
Investment in sustainable energy is key for the future. Opposition to windfarms is literally ‘stupid’. We have to adapt our perceptions to ensure our future, Do we want to lose our mobility, the comforts of our homes? This is what opposing sustainable energy sources will mean. People are blinkered, prejudiced and ignorant of the challenges that the latter half of the twenty-first century will bring. The French have invested and are still investing in wind turbines and huge PV solar. They are insuring themselves against an oil-poor future. We just hang back, squabble, prevaricate and simply dismiss out of hand the benefits of sustainable energy. We are lucky enough to have immediate access to sustainable sources like wind – why throw away the fantastic opportunities we have? Anthony Shall is an ignorant dinosaur. The science shows that wind farms ARE economically viable but we choose to reject them for spurious reasons. Get real, Mr Shall! Are the French, the Danes, the Germans and the Dutch just throwing money down the drain by investing in sustainable energy. They are emphatically NOT stupid.
Paul on 10th April 2012
It’s interesting that in the rush to “save” our environment what we are actually going to do is “destroy” it.
It is clear that this particular project is more about making money than it is about anything to do with the environment.
We need to look very carefully and sift out the vested interest from what we decide to accept as projects in the name of “saving” anything.
I’m afraid this wind farm is quite inapropriate as presently envisaged and one can only hope that any “special Government body” set up to deal with anything whatsoever will have the inteligence and power to prevent it going forward.
I supose that comment in itself will cause some concern because the last thing we want or need is anything controlled by a govenment to actually have poewer.
Philip Orndrup on 11th April 2012
Dear Sir,
Please forward full package information on your
project.
Best regards
Tony Durbin on 11th April 2012
I object to this crazy scheme; that will cost billions to construct from non-green energy sourced fossil fuel engineering – a cost that will never be covered in the working lifetime of this wind dependent folly. I sincerely hope our Minister for Climate Change, Greg Barker will scotch this based on the forgoing, and that an enormous amount of delapidation is inevitable; and that over the lifetime of the “farm” millions of litres of fossil fuel will be used by large sea-going vessels needed to constantly service this folly and thus cancel out the paltry green energy objective.
Paul Hickman on 14th May 2012
I fully support this wind farm. We have to ‘live in our times’ and adapt our lifestyle to match our needs, this time with regard to sustainable energy sources. The ‘nimbys’ are not in tune with the requirements of the future. The ‘spoils the view’ argument is facile and irrelevant. At a distance, the profile of the turbines is minuscule. Why are turbines popping up everywhere? … because together they really are the key to sustainable energy supplies.