A SCOTTISH MEP last night said that windfarms are the modern equivalent of national follies but with less practical benefit.
Struan Stevenson was speaking at an anti-windfarm meeting at the Royal Highland Hotel in Inverness.
The meeting was organised by Highland councilor Jim Crawford, who is an outspoken critic of windfarms.
Mr Stevenson, a Conservative MEP, said that the Scottish Government’s renewable energy policy and reliance on windfarms was creating a rural landscape of “expensive, modern-day architectural follies with little or no practical benefit to the environment”.
He said: “Giant, industrial wind turbines are the modern-day equivalent of architectural national follies like McCaig’s Tower in Oban, or the National Monument on Calton Hill in Edinburgh.
“And like those expensive vanity projects, windfarms serve no practical purpose, yet they certainly aren’t redeemed by the aesthetic merits of their 19th-century predecessors.
“All they do is force up electricity bills, driving over 1million Scots into fuel poverty, creating a rising tide of bankruptcies, trashing Scotland’s unique landscape, while failing to reduce carbon emissions.”
He added: “The Scottish Government badly needs to look at embracing a wider, more economically and environmentally-sustainable energy mix.
“The long-term generating costs for nuclear power, including safe storage of waste and final de-commissioning, are estimated at around £68 per MW hour. Onshore wind is considerably more expensive at £86 per MW hour and offshore wind is completely out of the park at a humungous £112 per MW hour.”
“Remember that carbon-zero nuclear power is 100% reliable, while wind turbines only operate for around 22% of their active life and require baseload backup, to ensure the lights don’t go out.”
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