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A big wind
farm protest
rally was held in Cardiff on 24 May 2011 to
coincide with the opening of the new Welsh parliament. About 2000
protesters from all over Wales made it the largest ever protest outside the
Welsh Assembly buildings (The Senedd)
See
Conservation of Upland Powys for photos:
CUP
photos: http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.121931871223063.29153.108291759253741
Fan
photos: http://www.facebook.com/photo_search.php?oid=108291759253741&view=all
Wind
Farm Rally News stories:
***
See recent news stories from the national press further down this page. ***
Date
set for wind farm protest rally:
http://www.countytimes.co.uk/news/102267/date-set-for-power-protest-rally-in-cardiff-bay.aspx
Four
men walk to Cardiff in Powys power plan protest:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-mid-wales-13445471
Update for Day 1 -
click
here
Update for Days
2-4 - click
here
Nice
photos here:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10150612581395333&set=o.108291759253741&type=1&ref=nf
*****************
PETITIONS
1)
e-Petition on National Assembly for Wales
web site:
Click
the button below to link to read and sign petition.
RECENT
NEWS STORIES
*****************
30
November 2011
Couple
settle with wind farm operators over 'unbearable noise'
A
couple have settled a High Court damages action against the owners and
operators of a wind farm they say drove them from their farmhouse home with
its ''unbearable'' noise. Read
more
23
May 2011:
Lord
Carlisle Calls to Scrap TAN 8
National
Grid Launch Pylon Design Competition
Channel
4 news reports, "The iconic steel electricity pylons that line motorways
and spans valleys are due for a major makeover. As Tom Clarke reports, a
competition is aiming to make the network more 'visually pleasing'." Read
more
22
May 2011: Wales
is in danger: why isn't the Prince of Wales saving it?
James
Delingbole, in his Telegraph blog, writes about the futility of wind
farms, the government's renewable energy policy and the forthcoming protest in
Cardiff. Read
More
*****************
21
May 2011:
Wales
in revolt over mammoth wind farm scheme
Christopher
Booker writes in The Telegraph about the forthcoming wind farm demonstration
in Cardiff on 24 May 2011. Read
More
300 miles of pylons
to blight countryside
David Derbyshire in "Mail
Online" writes about the hundreds of miles of pylons that are set to
blight come of Britain's most beautiful countryside.
Read
more
*****************
19
May 2011: Iolo’s ‘direct action’ warning over pylon plans
Iolo
Williams, a celebrity wildlife broadcaster today said he would be prepared to
take “direct action” against plans to build hundreds of giant pylons and a
substation in picturesque Mid Wales. Read
More
*****************
18
May 2011: Carbon Pledge will Double
Energy Bills
Energy
Secretary Chris Huhne yesterday committed Britain to “exceptionally
ambitious” cuts in carbon emissions despite warnings that they could help
double domestic energy bills in a decade, reports the Daily Express. For
full article, click
here
*****************
13
May 2011: Welsh minister rejects wind turbine on common land
The
Minister for Environment, Sustainability and Housing has refused consent to
Awel Aman Tawe to erect a wind turbine, hard standing and access tracks on Cefn
Gwrhyd Common near Tair Gwaith in South Wales. The threatened common is in Neath Port
Talbot Borough Council.
On behalf of the environment minister, Mr Stephen Jones, deputy head of the
planning division’s decisions branch, wrote:
‘I consider that the proposed
access road and wind turbine would not, because of their adverse effect on the
open character of the land and its value for recreation and public enjoyment,
be of benefit to the neighbourhood.’
For
full article, click
here
*****************
29
January
2011: Environmental Effects of mining rare earth metals
Renewable
energy technologies use rare earth metals to make them more efficient. Neodymium
is used to make the most powerful magnets in the world. Electric motors and
generators rely on the basic principles of electromagnetism - the stronger the
magnets they use, the more efficient they can be. With the rise of renewable
energy technologies the use of neodymium has come to prominence - for
use in hybrid cars and wind turbines. A top capacity direct-drive
permanent-magnet generator for a modern day wind turbine can use 4,400lb of
neodymium-based permanent magnet material.
If
you think renewable energy is green, see the Daily
Mail article about the devastating environmental
effects of mining rare earth elements in China - in the Inner Mongolia area.
Did you know that China supplies well over 90 % of the world's rare earth
metals?
*****************
November, 2010: Wind
turbines, infrasound, and health effects
Fresh
research from the USA recently presented in Canada shows that infrasound from wind turbines can have
health effects. “Infrasound:
Your ears ‘hear’ it but they don’t tell your brain. Physiologic pathway exists
for infrasound at levels that are not heard to affect the brain. The idea
that infrasound effects can be dismissed because they are inaudible
is incorrect.”
Research published by Alec
Salt, PhD, Department of Otolaryngology, Washington University School of
Medicine, St. Louis, Missouri, USA, at the “Symposium on Adverse
Health Effects of Industrial Wind Turbines,” Picton, Ontario, October
29-31, 2010. (See the Cochlear
Fluids Research Laboratory site, and “Responses
of the Ear to Infrasound and Wind Turbines.”
Click here to read a summary of the
paper, and here to download the
Power Point presentation (1.18 MB)..
September 12, 2010: An
ill wind blows for Denmark's green energy revolution.
From the Sunday
Telegraph.
Denmark has long been a role
model for green activists, but now it has become one of the first countries to turn against the turbines. To green campaigners, it is wind
farm heaven, generating a claimed fifth of its power from wind and praised by
British ministers as the model to follow. But amid a growing public backlash,
Denmark, the world's most wind farm-intensive country, is turning against the
turbines.
Last month, unnoticed in the UK, Denmark's giant state-owned power company,
Dong Energy, announced that it would abandon future onshore wind farms in the
country. "Every time we were building onshore, the public reacts in a
negative way and we had a lot of criticism from neighbours," said a
spokesman for the company. "Now we are putting all our efforts into
offshore windfarms."
Even as parts of the British Government continues to blow hard for wind, other
countries seem to be cooling on the idea. This summer, France brought in new
restrictions on wind power which will, according to the French wind lobby,
jeopardise more than a quarter of the country's planned windfarm projects.
For the full article see: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/denmark/
August 26, 2010: The Renewables Obligation.
Written by Dr Eamonn Butler, The
Adam Smith Institute.
On every gas and electricity bill that UK
households receive, there is a hidden tax. A tax of more than 8%. It's
called the Renewables Obligation. Energy companies are obligated – that
is, they are forced by the government under pain of fines and imprisonment
– to spend a chunk of their revenues developing and installing
non-fossil energy production systems. That means they are forced to pay
for things like wind factories, photo-electric technology and wave power,
whether or not they think these generation methods have the slightest
value, either to themselves or the nation.
Like all political efforts to make companies pay for things, the
government's plan does not work. The energy companies do not pay for these
generation technologies. The cost does not come out of their profits, or
their shareholders' dividends. It comes from their customers, naturally.
All of us who use energy in the home – and there may be one or two
completely self-sufficient households in the UK, but the other 28 million
or so do have to buy in gas or electricity – end up paying. We pay this
premium on our bills so that our energy companies can subsidise wind
farmers. For the full article go to:
www.adamsmith.org/blog/tax-and-economy/the-renewables-obligation/
Article by Robert Bryce
from www.energytribune.com This
is an extended version of an article that appeared in the Wall Street Journal on
August 24.
"Over the last few years, the wind industry has achieved remarkable growth
largely due to the industry’s claim that using more wind energy will result in
major reductions in carbon dioxide emissions. There’s just one problem with
that claim: it’s not true. Recent studies show that wind-generated electricity
may not result in any reduction in carbon emissions, or those reductions will be
so small as to be almost meaningless.
There are two reasons wind can’t make major cuts in carbon emissions. The wind
blows only intermittently and variably; and wind-generated electricity largely
displaces power produced by natural gas-fired generators rather than that coming
from plants that burn more carbon-intensive coal.
Because the wind is not dependable, electric utilities must either keep their
conventional power plants running all the time (much like “spinning reserve”
in industry parlance) to make sure the lights don’t go dark, or they must
continually ramp up and down the output from conventional coal- or gas-fired
generators (“cycling”).
Coal-fired and gas-fired generators are designed to run continuously. If they
don’t, fuel consumption, and emissions of key air pollutants, generally
increases. A car analogy helps explain the reason: An automobile that operates
at a constant speed -- say, 55 miles per hour -- will have better fuel
efficiency, and emit less pollution per mile travelled, than one that is stuck
in stop-and-go traffic. But the wind, by its very nature, is stop-and-go. The
result: minimal or no reductions in carbon emissions by shifting conventional
generation to wind."
For the full article see:
www.energytribune.com/articles.cfm/5103/Wind-Energy-Gets-Huge-Subsidies-So-Where-Are-The-CO2-Reductions
July
4, 2010: Primary school forced to turn off wind turbine after bird
deaths
A primary school in Dorset has
been forced to switch off a £20,000 wind turbine because it keeps
killing passing seabirds. (reported by The Daily Telegraph, click here
to read the full
article here)
The rotary blades on the 30ft (9m) structure have killed at
least 14 birds in the past six months.
The turbine, at Southwell Community Primary School, Portland,
was installed 18 months ago thanks to a grant from the
Department of Energy and Climate Change.
It provided six kilowatts of power an hour, but its performance
was overshadowed by the number of birds killed - far higher than
the one fatality per year predicted by the manufacturer. Headteacher Stuart McLeod was even forced to come into school
early to clear up the bodies before his young pupils spotted
them. "We were told by the manufacturer to expect maybe one
fatality a year but it killed 14 in six months so we took advice
and made the decision to turn it off".
Britain’s upland birds are in
danger of being driven off hills and mountains by onshore wind farms.
Recent scientific study
indicates the extent of the potential negative impact of Britain's
wind farm programme on wildlife. Scientists
have found that birds, including buzzards, golden plovers, curlews and red
grouse, are abandoning countryside around wind farms because the turbines act
as giant scarecrows, frightening them away.
The impact is small now because there are few wind farms but researchers warn
that, with hundreds more planned, plus an increase in the size of turbines,
the effect could become much worse.
For the full article
from the Sunday Times, January 3, go to:
www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6974082.ece
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