Soaring electricity bills are a great worry to many, and are topping the political agenda across the UK. Questions about the cost of wind energy to consumers, industry and the broader economy have never been more pressing.

We would like to invite you to our first national conference in Stirling on November 24th where a distinguished panel of academic and industry experts will discuss these questions. They will examine not just the past and current costs of wind energy within the context of wider energy policy, but also future costs in the light of the new subsidy mechanisms envisaged in the Energy Bill. There will be plenty of opportunity for audience participation.

The situation in Scotland is even more critical than in the rest of the UK. Scotland already hosts almost half of all the UK’s wind turbines, and the Scottish Government’s 2020 renewables targets require that number to triple. Yet fuel poverty is also a bigger problem here, with an estimated 40% of Scottish households currently afflicted.

You can download a flyer giving more information about the conference at the end of the article.

Registering is inexpensive and easy – just email Sarah at info@scotlandagainstspin.org or call 07715 106032

Speakers

Professor Anthony Trewavas
Professor Anthony TrewavasProfessor Anthony Trewavas is based at the Institute of Molecular Plant Sciences at the University of Edinburgh, and is well known for his research in the fields of plant physiology and molecular biology.

Professor Trewavas is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (1993), the Royal Society of Arts (1995), the Royal Society of London (1999) and the Centre for Future Studies (2001). In 1999 he received the “corresponding membership” award from the American Society of Plant Biologists, a prize given to one non-US biologist per year.

He is the author of over 220 papers and two books. His interests include plant behaviour, organic food, climate change, GM crops and environmentally-friendly farming. He is currently engaged mainly in academic pursuits, writing articles and a book.


Professor Gordon Hughes
Professor Gordon HughesProfessor Gordon Hughes is a Professor of Economics at the University of Edinburgh where he teaches courses in the Economics of Natural Resources and Public Economics. He is also currently a Commissioner on the Infrastructure Planning Commission.

Professor Hughes has advised governments on the design and implementation of environmental policies and has been responsible for some of the World Bank’s most important environmental guidelines. He was a senior adviser at the World Bank on energy and environmental policy until 2001.

In 2011, Professor Hughes wrote The Myth of Green Jobs for the Global Warming Policy Foundation, (GWPF). This was followed by The Impact Of Wind Power On Household Bills, the GWPF’s submission to the House of Commons Energy and Climate Change Committee for its public evidence session on the Economics of Wind Power (July 2012), and then by Why Is Wind Power So Expensive? In December 2012, he authored The Performance of Wind Farms in the UK and Denmark for the Renewable Energy Foundation.


Jeremy Nicholson
Jeremy NicholsonJeremy Nicholson is director of the Energy Intensive Users Group (EUIG), which campaigns for secure, competitive energy supplies for UK industry.

A civil engineer by training, he spent four years as an economic analyst working for a group of French-owned water companies in the UK. He then joined EIUG in 2000 as their economic adviser.

Jeremy Nicholson is also a board member of the International Federation of Industrial Consumers, a member of Ofgem’s Environmental Advisory Group, the Government’s Business Energy Forum, and a Fellow of the Energy Institute.


Dr Mike Hall
Dr Mike HallDr Mike Hall’s professional background is based in the sciences, and he is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Society of Biology.

Dr Hall spent sixteen years in medical research as Head of Department of Cell Biology & Biochemistry in the Pharmaceutical Industry, and fourteen years as consultant, co-ordinator and medical writer to the Pharmaceutical Industry.

With over twenty years’ experience of campaigning against windfarms, Dr Hall joined Friends of Eden, Lakeland and Lunesdale Scenery (FELLS) at its formation in 2006, and is now President. FELLS was set up to help local groups protect the North West landscape from unwarranted industrial development, especially windfarms.

Dr Hall was also a founding Director of the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF), and in this role, has participated in nine Public Inquiries. Five of these were successful, two were lost, and in a further two cases the applicant withdrew.

Dr Hall has addressed many public meetings all over the UK, often in debate with developers, and FELLS remains fully active as a regionally-based umbrella opposition group.


Mike Stigwood
Mike StigwoodMike Stigwood is one of the country’s – if not the world’s – leading experts on wind turbine noise. His ground-breaking research into amplitude modulation and other noise impacts from turbines on residents up to 10km from wind farms supplies some of the strongest scientific evidence to date for the environmental cost of windfarms.

Mike Stigwood is an ex-Environmental Health Officer, with thirty-eight years’ experience, nineteen of which were spent working for a range of local government authorities, from Cambridge City to Hackney BC, Huntingdonshire DC, Stevenage and lastly Mid- Bedfordshire DC.

In 1994 Mike Stigwood left to set up his own Environmental Health consultancy, MAS Environmental. He had developed a keen interest in renewable energy and minimising reliance on fossil fuels in the 1980s, and got involved in the issue of wind turbine noise from around 2004. It was then that he discovered that there were serious impacts that had not been identified in the guidance, and he has been researching the problems to obtain a better understanding ever since.

Mike has played a vital role in many high profile legal battles. He has also created a range of courses taught regularly to Environmental Health Officers, Planning Officers and other technicians in the environmental health field.


Mike Haseler
Mike HaselerA physics and electronics graduate of St Andrews University, Mike Haseler worked for a variety of industrial manufacturing companies, on a large range of projects controlling or monitoring temperature, before starting his own temperature control company and designing precision temperature controllers.

He joined the Scottish Parliamentary Renewable Energy Group and carried out extensive research into the renewable energy sector, becoming increasingly concerned at the lack of economic benefit from existing policy. He began campaigning to secure more jobs for Scotland in wind energy, joining the Green party who chose him to stand at the 2003 Scottish election, although he later took the decision to withdraw his candidacy.

While he continued to work in the wind industry in Scotland, erecting weather monitoring equipment, he finally gave up after accidentally informing a farmer that a windfarm was going to be built next to his property and seeing his look of absolute horror.

Since then Mike has been a campaigner against wind energy, and for energy policies that are based on ‘real’ science rather than global warming alarmism, and on pragmatic, evidence-based reasoning rather than utopianism. A keen blogger, he established the Scottish Climate and Energy Forum in 2011.


Agenda

9.00 - 9.50am

Registration and refreshments

9.50 - 10.00am

Welcome from the Chair, Professor Anthony Trewavas

10.00 - 10.35am

Dr Mike Hall

10.35 - 11.05am

Jeremy Nicholson

11.05 - 11.30am

Break

11.30 - 12.00am

Professor Gordon Hughes

12.05 - 12.35pm

Mike Haseler

12.35 - 1.35pm

Lunch

1.35 - 2.15pm

Panel Discussion

2.15 - 3.15pm

Mike Stigwood

3.15 - 3.30pm

Closing Remarks

Location

The Albert Halls is approximately thirty minutes’ drive away from both Edinburgh and Glasgow, situated in the centre of Stirling.

If you are planning to travel by car, there is free parking at the venue. Stirling is also well served by public transport links and you can plan your journey by going to the Traveline Scotland website.

The Albert Halls
Albert Place, Dumbarton Road
Stirling FK8 2QL.
Tel 01786 173544
alberthalls.stirling.gov.uk


Downloads

Please help us advertise the conference by downloading and sharing one of the files below;

A4 Poster (High Resolution – suitable for printing): A4 Poster (PDF)

A4 Poster (Low Resolution – suitable for email distribution): A4 Poster (PDF)


9 Comments

William J Cairns · November 7, 2013 at 9:52 am

I wholeheartedly agree that the economic case has been inadequately addressed – in fact, misrepresented by the Scottish Government. However the landscape intrusiveness case has also been appallingly understated and misrepresented. While realizing that the economic program proposed requires the entire day without distraction, a follow-up One-day program dealing with landscape issues should be considered as a follow-up in say three months time.

    Linda Holt · November 7, 2013 at 11:43 pm

    I agree about the landscape issue. It’s too often written off as a matter of personal taste. Did you see the fantastic recent edition of Wild Land News with the best explanation I have ever read of why turbines are such a visual disaster by Christine Lovelock? As for SAS organising another conference, right now we’re flat out on this one … if you wanted to help, that would be great. Incidentally, on the landscape issue, SNH has just been forced to open its wild land map for consultation because of pressure on the government by the wind industry. Anyone can put in a response – please do – otherwise the Scottish Government ends up thinking that ordinary people don’t care nearly as much as wind developers. http://www.snh.gov.uk/protecting-scotlands-nature/looking-after-landscapes/landscape-policy-and-guidance/wild-land/mapping/

EfN Navitus · November 11, 2013 at 10:24 pm

The cost is even greater than you think. The US Natnl Renewable Energy Lab, NREL, has studied a 80% Renewables system for 2050. It only works on a continental scale and requires draconian central control minute by minute. You could say it works, but the penalties and costs are such that it is fairer to say it fails.
It is so expensive that only rich regions could afford it, making them poorer. It is not suitable for developing regions.
Renewables have been reinvented with modern tech. There are many places where it is the best solution. We should stop the nonsense in Scotland and ask ‘Who would benefit most from these systems and where?’
Our Twitter site leads you to a full discussion of the NREL studies and the equivalent DESERTEC proposal for the EU.
It takes a special effort to overturn a government policy in full flood. Do help us to stop the worst placed offshore wind farm, NAVITUS, in Bournemouth. We see many Scots having sunny holidays on our beaches and Nature Reserves.

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