Yes 2 Benington Wind Farm

The Stop Benington Wind Farm group is critical of the fact that the Benington Wind Farm project will attract public subsidy. This is most unfair, especially when we consider the staggering sums awarded to nuclear power. For example, £70bn of public money is required to clean up existing nuclear sites, more than £1,000 for every person in the nation. In July 2007, a parliamentary report from the public accounts committee attacked the government for agreeing to underwrite the liabilities of the nuclear generator British Energy to the sum of £5.3bn.

In the report ‘Wind Power in the UK’, the Sustainable Development Commission assesses the impact of wind power to our electricity bills, assuming that the Government meets the 2020 target of 20% for renewables. Their finding is that the additional cost to the consumer would be about 5% of the current domestic charge, adding that ‘As fossil fuel prices increase and wind turbines become cheaper to build, wind power may even become one of the cheapest forms of electricity generation over the next 15 years’. This looks like a remarkably good deal when we consider the large increases in household bills seen between 2004 and 2007. During this period, our over reliance on imported energy meant that a typical annual electricity bill rocketed by 30%.

The Stop Benington Wind Farm group also maintain that the Benington site is unsuitable despite favourable performance data from the nearby Burton Wold wind farm. Between April ’06 and March ’07 electricity was produced equivalent to the demand of 8,300 homes. That’s 39,010,000kWh for the technically minded and a saving of 34,000 tonnes of CO2. These numbers are much more interesting than any projections or forecasts because they’re real data from an operating wind farm. When the blades at Burton Wold turn it’s secure carbon free energy that’s produced and it just doesn’t get any better than that.

For more information on wind energy economics, visit http://www.yes2wind.com/25_faq.html

Chris S