Stop the Rampion Off-shore Wind Farm

E.On’s “Rampion” massive off-shore wind farm, up to 690ft high and as wide as Mid Sussex, should not be approved:

1. Offshore wind farms are unreliable. E.On boasts of an installed electrical capacity of up to 700 megawatt (MW) from the 100 to 195 turbines. This is the potential output if the wind was blowing at optimum speed all the time.

Currently all the 3,500 turbines sited around the country feed on average just 1,000 MW into the grid – no more than the output of a single, medium-sized conventional power station. Because of this unreliability, conventional power stations will still be needed on permanent standby, thereby negating any alleged CO2 savings.

2. Off-shore wind farms are an extremely expensive way to produce electricity – nine times as much as gas-fired power. E.On would not dream of building this wind farm unless they were guaranteed a huge Government subsidy. This comes in the form of a subsidy scheme, paid for by dramatically increasing our household fuel bills, whereby owners of wind turbines earn an additional £49 for every ‘megawatt hour’ they produce, and twice that sum for offshore wind turbines.

What other industry gets a public subsidy equivalent to 100 or even 200 per cent of the value of what it produces?

3. Offshore wind farms do not ‘save the planet’ by cutting our emissions of CO2.

Even if you believe that curbing our use of fossil fuels could change the Earth’s climate, the CO2 reduction allegedly achieved by a wind farm over a year, would be cancelled out by a single jumbo jet flying daily between Britain and America, over the same period.

Sources: The Real Global Warming Disaster – Christopher Booker. The Rational Optimist – Dr Matt Ridley.