I really can’t believe this was actually published in a UK paper. Via the Telegraph.uk:

From the summit of Plynlimon, in the deep country of the Cambrian Mountains, there is a 70-mile panorama of the Cader range, hill after green-blue hill stretching into the distance, from the peaks around Bala to the shores of Cardigan Bay.

It was a view that caught the breath. It still does, in a different way. The view from Plynlimon now is of more than 200 wind turbines, nearly a tenth of Britain’s onshore total, stretching across ridge-lines, dominating near and far horizons. The author George Borrow wrote a whole chapter on Plynlimon in his classic 19th-century travelogue, Wild Wales. It’s not so wild these days.

The countryside is being overrun in the UK with wind farms. To say they are not living up to their billing is an understatement:

RUK says that “every unit of electricity from a wind turbine displaces one from conventional power stations”, and even the existing wind turbines have “the capacity to prevent the emission of 3.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per annum”.

The key weasel word in that last sentence is “capacity”. The CO2 reduction figure assumes that all wind turbines are able to generate electricity to 100 per cent of their capacity, 100 per cent of the time. But the basic problem with wind power is that most of the time, the wind does not blow.

A typical commercial turbine needs a wind speed of between 6-10mph to start operating – and automatically stops when the wind is more than around 55mph, to protect its mechanisms. Even when the wind is blowing between those speeds, it – and therefore the amount of electricity generated – is variable, and usually below the turbine’s full theoretical capacity.

According to government figures, the average wind turbine operates to just 27 per cent of its capacity – even the industry only claims 30 per cent – and there are some grounds for suggesting that even this is a significant exaggeration. Professor Michael Jefferson, of the London Metropolitan Business School, says that in 2008 less than a fifth of onshore wind farms achieved 30 per cent capacity. (emphasis added)

FYI, I like the phrase “the key weasel word.”

Set aside the fact that CO2 does not contribute to the mythical phenomenon of global warming, wind power does not pay for itself. I doesn’t pay for itself in the UK, it doesn’t pay for itself in China and it doesn’t pay for itself in Germany:

Campbell Dunford, director of the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF), says that Germany – which has the largest number of wind turbines in Europe – “is building five new coal power stations, which it does not otherwise need, purely to provide covering power for the fluctuations from their wind farms. I am not sure [wind] has been a great success for them.” Mr Dunford claims that Germany’s CO2 emissions have actually risen since it increased its use of wind power. Though the wind itself might, in RUK’s words, be “free,” the cost of backup capacity is likely to be astronomical.

What an economic disaster.

If wind power doesn’t deliver on its promised generation capacity, constructing the wind mills destroys the natural landscape and has all kinds of hidden costs-such as additional conventional back up generation capacity why build them?

Why, then, are we so “fixated” with wind? The number of onshore wind turbines is likely to treble in the next few years. A total of 7,000 turbines, on and off-shore, are either under construction, approved for building or seeking planning permission.

Part of the answer may be that wind turbines are visible, tangible symbols of political commitment and moral righteousness. Mr Clegg’s party wants 15,000 of them, and the Energy Secretary, Chris Huhne, also a Lib Dem, has described them as “beautiful”. The Lib Dems are also fiercely against nuclear, though their Tory partners are not.

The rest of the answer appears to be subsidy. The Government pays an indirect subsidy, a “renewable obligation”, or RO – and putting up a wind turbine is the cheapest way to collect it. In contrast to better renewable technologies, a turbine is inexpensive to build, perhaps around

What a scam and we the people are paying for it. And the closing quote in the Telegraph article:

Mrs Clegg has acted with characteristic business acumen. These aren’t just wind farms – they’re subsidy farms.

An extra big tip O’ the hat goes to Tom Nelson