LINDA Holt (Letters, February 13) claims wind turbines are the main cause
of rising energy bills for businesses and consumers.
How is it then that the big six energy companies have each paid out share
dividends of hundreds of millions of pounds almost every year? Much of this
money goes straight into the pockets of their senior executives, who get
their bonuses in shares in the company.
The “wind turbines cause high energy bills” story is just another fairy
story like the one about green levies pushing up energy bills, when in fact
they amounted to less than 5% of the average bill and included subsidies to
people on low incomes to help insulate their homes. The energy companies’
excessive price rises are due to the greed of their executives and major
shareholders and governments’ failure to regulate them, not the costs of
green energy.
Ms Holt also claims wind turbines have “caused de-industrialisation”,
ignoring the real and obvious cause – the financial crisis caused by
deregulation of the finance sector from the 1980s on.
She claims pumped storage hydroelectric systems will have financial costs
which are too high – in fact they make a profit by pumping water uphill
during periods of low demand when electricity is cheaper and generating
electricity by running it back down over the turbines when electricity
prices are higher during peak demand. While this process overall uses more
energy than it generates it allows other power stations to avoid having to
shut down and restart, which would cost a lot more in both energy and money.
Since I know several people who were born in Lanarkshire and work on wind
turbines, I doubt her claim that spending on wind turbines increase
unemployment. The wind companies have long since trained up Scottish
employees, many of who have now become trainers or managers themselves of
the next generation of Scots to work for them.
Duncan McFarlane,
Beanshields,
Braidwood, Carluke.
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