The UK is way ahead of Australia in the climate madness stakes, having already enacted crippling legislation that will hamstring its energy policy by requiring 15% of its energy to be generated from “green” [i.e. useless] sources by 2020, and committing itself to a massive 80% reduction in CO2 emissions by 2050. But unfortunately, not everyone wants ugly wind farms in their back yards, and the planning system is grinding to a halt:
The planning system must allow more wind farms or Britain will fail to meet key climate change targets, Government advisers have warned.
The UK is committed to generating 15 per cent of energy from green sources like wind and solar by 2020.
But at the moment only 3 per cent of energy comes from renewables. [Only 12% to go in less than a decade – good luck with that!]
Lord Adair Turner, Chairman of the Committee on Climate Change (CCC), said the UK is likely to miss the target unless there is massive investment in wind, wave and solar.
In a strongly-worded letter to Chris Huhne, the Energy and Climate Change Minister, he called for the Government to “ramp up” efforts to build turbines both on land and at sea.
He said the average wind farm is stuck for more than three years in the planning system. In the last year planning approval rates fell from 68 per cent to 53 per cent.
Despite concerns about wind farms in beauty spots, he said planning permission needs to be given faster so that three times as many turbines can be installed every year. (source)
I guess common-sense will eventually prevail at some point, when the utter lunacy of all this is too obvious to ignore, but how supposedly intelligent people can be so freaking dumb is quite frankly staggering.
Until that happens, however, it’s a case of “Adios”, Great Britain.
(h/t EU Referendum)
Possibly one of the reasons for the massive interest in wind is the amount subsidy received by wind farm operators in the UK. (About 3 times the actual value of energy produced)
I’d recommend “The Wind Farm Scam” by John Etherington (Independent Minds) for a detailed look at the issues.
That article is just too funny..
It reminds me of Team America and what “Hans Brix” said to “Kim Jong Il”. It’s like Lord Turner is saying “if you dont ramp up on green energy, we will be very angry.. and we will write you a letter, telling you how angry we are”.
Priceless. Pop over to Jo Nova for similar hilarity about alternative energy.
I am convinced that setting the “targets” that they are is simply a “give the electorate a warm fuzzy feeling” exercise; there is no way on this green Earth they’re ever going to achieve them.
The sad part is that no-one in the right position (eg the MSM) seems to have the guts to call them out on it.