by Allan Taylor

Created on: December 11, 2008   Last Updated: December 14, 2008

No, they are not.

Wind farms are ugly blots on the landscape.

The ones I have seen are an environmental and economic disaster and should never have been built in the first place. They wouldn't have been constructed without Government subsidy. The politicians have been forced by the Greens to subsidize wind farms and many other non-viable renewable energy projects. Why? Because it brings them votes.

Recently I toured the coastal region of Spain and Portugal where the scenery of the beautiful Atlantic coastline and adjacent mountains is marred by these monstrosities of a previous age and half of the towers were in a state of disrepair and not working.

I call that a deliberate despoiling of the environment. What a paradox! The Greens, who say we must preserve our environment, tread carefully, leave only footprints, go and promote these ugly monstrosities of wind turbine towers all over the place and so ruin the scenic beauty of the landscape. The Greens are mad!

In Australia, where I live, some wind farm proposals have actually been turned down for reason that they would present a hazard to bird life, in particular migratory species that would fly into the turbines.

Then there is the economic aspect of them to consider. The local farmer on whose land they are built is happy because he gets a rental income for doing nothing. Everybody else in the locality is not so happy about having this eye sore on the horizon. Furthermore, there will be many grumblings when peoples' power bill increases by maybe 30% or more for the privilege of using "green electricity". It has always puzzled me when you have only one power line to your house how you can distinguish between "green electricity" and "black electricity" which comes from thermal (coal) power stations. Maybe I'm stupid to ask these questions?

The major problem with wind farms is that they operate only when the wind is blowing at a convenient speed. No wind means no electricity generated. Also, if the wind is too high they shut down, and that is the ideal theoretical situation. In practice they are an economic disaster because you always have to have a backup of a base load generating plant (e.g. coal, gas or nuclear) which has to operate all the time anyway, either full steam ahead or on standby. So why build the wind farm in the first place? The electricity generated by the wind farm is twice the cost of that coming from a large thermal generating plant.

Many of these wind farm projects are glamorized by the promoters saying

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