Wind farms scandal

THE disclosure (Mail) that wind farm operators were paid £125million last year to dump energy in so-called constraint payments should come as no surprise.

These payments are made when the national Grid is overloaded and energy supply exceeds demand.

The lion’s share, £115million, went to Scottish wind farm operators, as Scotland has the highest density of installed wind power capacity of any country in the world, with an estimated 163MW for every 1,000km2.

The Scottish Government’s obsession with wind energy and its target of 100 per cent of energy production from renewable sources by 2020 has left our landscape bristling with turbines, pylons and overhead lines.

The Government claims this is Scotland’s way of contributing to

cutting CO2 emissions, despite the fact that the Chinese are opening a coalfired power station every week to supply the steel Scotland needs to build its forest of turbines.

If there is no wind there is no power. When temperatures plunge below zero and there is a surging demand for energy, the UK’s 7,562 onshore and 1,934 offshore turbines, most of which are in Scotland, will be idle. The SNP Government, which is fanatically opposed to nuclear power, will have to import nuclear generated electricity from England or suffer blackouts.

The financial scandal that ensures the costs of this useless technology are passed directly to the consumer, including these ludicrous constraint payments, has led to Scotland’s electricity consumers suffering among the worst fuel poverty in Europe. The scandal of constraint payments is merely the tip of the turbine iceberg that the SNP’s ship of state is sailing directly towards. STRuAN STEVENSON,

Girvan, Ayrshire.