Blow Off

Peter Hitchens writes:

Tear down those windmills. Those of us who have long argued against the national plague of ugly wind farms, ruining huge areas of our loveliest landscapes, were right all along.

The first proper study of these hideous, intrusive things shows that it is only subsidies that make them viable. And those subsidies, which are pushing up all our electricity bills, are based on warmist fanaticism, not on reason.

Only the very best of the land-based farms operate at 50 per cent of their supposed capacity. Many others produce only 25 to 30 per cent. One, in Blyth Harbour in Northumberland, produces only 7.9 per cent of its maximum capacity.

Wind power is, was and always will be a fantasy. Yet it is the official policy of all the major political parties in this country, as we head towards a Third World electricity shortage not many years ahead.

If the money for these subsidies is there, then it should be used to guarantee coal and nuclear power, both of which are reliable whereas this sort of thing is not (look forward to 1960s power cuts), and both of which actually employ people. But that latter is the point, of course: we can't have proper jobs, can we? Where would it all end? Nor has our Political Class the slightest desire for energy independence from its paymasters in the Gulf.