Not so green machines

SIR, – Hallelujah for “clean green” energy. Aberdeen Bay will now be “boasting” the world’s most “powerful” wind turbines. The EOWDC will have giant industrial machines emerging from our once pristine, sparkling horizon, apparently composed entirely of fairy dust.

Not quite. A typical 3MW turbine requires: 335 tonnes of steel; 4.7 tonnes of copper; 1,200 tonnes of concrete (cement and aggregates); three tonnes of aluminium; two tonnes of rare earth elements; zinc; molybdenum, all drilled, mined, extracted and processed using fossil fuelled machines.

The blades, each weighing around 10 tonnes, are the size of a jet fighter. These monsters are currently regarded as unrecyclable and the worldwide waste could amount to 47,000,000 tonnes by 2050.

The installation of an offshore windfarm of, say, 100 turbines, requires almost 2,000,000 barrels of fuel just to power the ships involved in the construction.

Spare a thought too, for the poor folk of Sandend and Keith who are now acutely aware of the disruptive, hidden extras: mile upon mile of steel pylons, cables all converging on the unsightly construction, right on their doorstep, at Blackhillock substation. In the next four years, our offshore subsidy bill is due to more than double, from £1,400,000,000 a year to £3,100,000,000

At the flick of a switch, we have definitely created the world’s most powerful extractor fans.

Yours, also having to pay for permanent backup when the wind stops.