Ireland's failure to insist on environmental impact assessments before major development projects are carried out will be scrutinised by the European Court of Justice on Thursday. The European Commission brought an action against Ireland in May 2006, claiming that the government had failed to comply with its obligations under the 1985 Impact Assessment Directive. ...The commission alleged that ‘‘particular deficiencies'' in relation to environmental impact assessments for a wind farm at Derrybrien, Co Galway, amounted to ‘‘a manifest breach of the directive''. Work began on the 60-megawatt windfarm in July 2003. About 90 per cent of the site roads on the 300-hectare site and half the bases of the 71 wind turbines had been completed when a landslide occurred on October 16, 2003. The landslide destroyed trees, fisheries and an empty house, and blocked two roads, but nobody was hurt.

SILT run-off during the construction of a wind farm is believed to be the source responsible for the wiping out of valuable vegetation and a colossal decrease in wild Brown Trout fish stocks in one of Tyrone's hidden beauty spots. ...One source described the fish caught as "feeble and malnourished" and indicated that the "damage to the rare genetic strain was irreparable." Lough Lee has long been considered by angling tourists as one of the most unique freshwater fishing sites in Ireland or Britain. ...problems arose during the construction of the 9MW wind farm by leading company Airtricity, who was given planning permission to position turbines on the slope of Bin Mountain facing and in close proximity to the Lough.

A wind farm company has said greenhouse gases released during the construction of a scheme on peat land will be "paid back" in clean energy within months. Lewis Wind Power (LWP) predicts it will take seven months for the turbines planned for Barvas Moor to cancel out the carbon dioxide (CO2) released. The pledge comes in the wake of a call by Wetlands International for greater protection for the world's peat lands. It warns that the areas store huge quantities of harmful gases.

Accepted theories about man causing global warming are "lies" claims a controversial new TV documentary. 'The Great Global Warming Swindle' - backed by eminent scientists - is set to rock the accepted consensus that climate change is being driven by humans. The programme, to be screened on Channel 4 on Thursday March 8, will see a series of respected scientists attack the "propaganda" that they claim is killing the world's poor. Even the co-founder of Greenpeace, Patrick Moore, is shown, claiming African countries should be encouraged to burn more CO2. Nobody in the documentary defends the greenhouse effect theory, as it claims that climate change is natural, has been occurring for years, and ice falling from glaciers is just the spring break-up and as normal as leaves falling in autumn. A source at Channel 4 said: "It is essentially a polemic and we are expecting it to cause trouble, but this is the controversial programming that Channel 4 is renowned for."

Your view: Is carbon offsetting a con? Holidaymakers are being misled by companies who guarantee to repair the damage flights do to the atmosphere, according to the first independent study of a fast-growing market. The report claims it is not possible to state categorically that buying any "carbon offset" — as Tony Blair did grudgingly last week to counter the global warming potential of his family's New Year break in Miami Beach — will neutralise the damage that flying causes to the atmosphere.

Cow flatulence last night became the latest battleground in the fight for the green vote with farmers fearing they could be hit by a new levy.Politicians hit out at the levels of bovine emissions - which now account for about one million tonnes of methane a year in the UK. Whitehall officials are now preparing to get bids to analyse the financial benefits of a scheme which would see farms buying and selling "credits" for the amount of gas their herds produce.

LONDON (AFX) - British Airways PLC, Virgin Atlantic and easyJet PLC have pulled out of the UK government's carbon emission reduction scheme after Chancellor Gordon Brown doubled air passenger duty, The Independent on Sunday newspaper reported. The rise in the duty -- from 5 stg to 10 stg for standard class passengers on European flights, from 10 stg to 20 stg for business or premium classes in Europe, and from 40 stg to 80 stg for passengers flying to other destinations -- was announced by Brown in his pre-budget report last week.

power plant labelled one of the worst in the UK for pollution is to supply energy generated from wood shavings. The Didcot A station will now provide electricity for 100,000 homes created with the use of carbon-neutral fuels, as well as coal-fired power production. A new facility will use bio-mass fuels which absorb as much carbon dioxide when growing as they create when burnt.

Scottish & Southern Energy Group has become the first energy company to be hauled over the coals by the Advertising Standards Authority for failing to be able to back up claims that its green tariff offset its customers’ carbon emissions.....But while SSE was able to furnish the agency with figures showing the average CO2 emissions from waste and gas heating, it was unable to provide concrete evidence to show that the number of trees planted would meet or exceed this level. The ASA ruled that the advert breached guidelines on truthfulness and substantiation and told SSE not to use it again and not to make the claim in the future unless it was amended.

When the turbines go up, it’s not just the scenery that suffers, it's the atmosphere too. Ed Douglas reveals the environmental costs of wind power

An indictment of the Scottish Executive and regulatory incompetence and indifference......‘One is left with a clear impression of inertia, bungling, duplicity, poor communication, procrastination, obfuscation and, quite frankly, shoddy and incorrect decision-taking both in temporal and technical terms'.

It is broadly accepted that wind turbines do not emit CO2 at the point of generation. However, in common with all types of power station, it is emitted during their construction and, through damage directly inflicted on the construction site, over a much longer period. The total debt will vary from site to site but will comprise some or all of the following;

• Emissions arising from fabrication (steel smelting, forging of turbine columns, the manufacture of blades and the electrical and mechanical components);
• Emissions arising from construction (transportation of components, quarrying, building foundations, access tracks and hard standings, commissioning);
• The indirect loss of CO2 uptake (fixation) by plants originally on the surface of the site but obliterated by construction activity including the destruction of active bog plants on wet sites and deforestation;
• Emissions due to the indirect, long-term liberation of CO2 from carbon stored in peat due to drying and oxidation processes caused by construction of the site.

It is important to recognise that peat is a major store of carbon accumulated from dead plant remains over many millennia. It is held in perpetuity because the bog’s wetness and acid conditions prevent the access of oxygen and inhibit the growth of bacteria which would otherwise rot the vegetation. Draining peat for construction reverses both these long-term processes: the soil is exposed to the air, the carbon is converted to CO2 and released slowly to the atmosphere.

Several papers from the wind industry in Denmark and the UK have addressed the first two points with estimates of payback time ranging from about six to 30 months.

However, the industry rarely, if ever, considers the last two. This is a fundamental omission as their contribution to the overall CO2 debt, in particular the last, can be far greater than all the others put together. This paper outlines a procedure for quantifying it.

The guide has been prepared to enable anyone with access to the Environmental Statement (ES) that forms part of a Planning Application (PA) for a wind farm to estimate its CO2 debt. (If some of the requisite information proves to be unavailable, this ought to provide grounds for postponing consideration of the application and the commissioning of further assessment.)

The results of the calculations described should be submitted to planning authorities or Public Inquiries as part of the arguments used in assessing the merits and demerits of an application.

In the UK, the parallel objective is to generate 10% of the UK’s electricity from renewable sources by 2010. Renewable electricity has become synonymous with CO2 reduction. However, the relationship between renewables and CO2 reduction in the power generation sector does not appear to have been examined in detail, and the likelihood, scale, and cost of emissions abatement from renewables is very poorly understood.

The purpose of this report is to analyse a wide range of technical literature that questions whether the renewables policy can achieve its goals of emissions reduction and power generation. To some, renewable energy has the simple and unanalysed virtue of being “green”. However, the reality of this quality is dependent on practical issues relating to electricity supply.

......In conclusion, it seems reasonable to ask why wind-power is the beneficiary of such extensive support if it not only fails to achieve the CO2 reductions required, but also causes cost increases in back-up, maintenance and transmission, while at the same time discouraging investment in clean, firm generation.

It was Michael Crichton who first prominently identified environmentalism as a religion. That was in a speech in 2003, but the world has moved on apace since then and adherents of the creed now have a firm grip on the world at large. Global Warming has become the core belief in a new eco-theology. The term is used as shorthand for anthropogenic (or man made) global warming. It is closely related to other modern belief systems, such as political correctness, chemophobia and various other forms of scaremongering, but it represents the vanguard in the assault on scientific man.

The CO2 hysteria is absurd, considering the minute contribution made by human beings. Of course the climate is changing - it always has done, hence the thriving vineyards of Northumberland in the 12th century and the Thames frozen three feet deep in the 19th - but human activity is largely irrelevant. The world's climate is controlled by solar activity, by variations in the earth's rotation and orbit, by external factors in space and, terrestrially, by clouds and volcanic activity. If the Canutes of the IPCC imagine they can control those elements, they are even more infatuated than they appear.

The only proven source of the steady base load electricity necessary for a modern society to function is nuclear fission. James Lovelock - deeply pessimistic about the effects of what he calls global heating - recognises this. However, Greenpeace and others stick to their long-established opposition to nuclear power. Some people see bio-fuels as an important component of a lower-carbon future. Others believe they are a distraction and cause more environmental problems than they solve. Of course, these are not the only options, but they illustrate the point that specific technologies should not to be rejected out of hand. It is ludicrous to suggest that we could rely on wind and solar power entirely. And the agenda for some seems to be to eliminate all private transport and scale back international trade enormously, to take us back to smaller, self-contained economic units; the very reverse of a globalisation trend which has been in progress for centuries.

Matt Partridge, who sells Gamesa wind turbines in return for an outlandishly large subsidy, is circularising Welsh newspapers with various bits of evidence for global warming (Have Your Say, March 29). What has global warming got to do with the need, or otherwise, for wind turbines? Nothing - because the Government's own figure for saving the UK's CO2 emission by renewable power generation, mainly wind, is just 9.2 million tonnes per year by 2010. This is less than the emission from a single, medium-sized coal-fired power station, and is less than four ten-thousandths (0.0004) of global CO2 emission, and stands no chance of altering atmospheric CO2 concentration, still less deflecting climate change, as Mr Partridge's advertising spiel implies.

ELVIS is not still alive and living in Brazil. The Royal Family had nothing whatsoever to do with Princess Diana's death. And Marilyn Monroe died of nothing more sinister than a drugs overdose. All of which will convey to you that I am not normally one who believes in conspiracy theories. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, the dullest and most obvious explanation is usually the right one. However, I am beginning to join that rebellious group of people who - whisper it - are becoming less, rather than more, convinced of global warming. An enormous industry is growing up and some people are doing very nicely thank-you on the back of climatic change. One can only wonder at the scale of scientific grants. One thing we don't have to wonder about is taxes - any excuse. And the business to be in today is undoubtedly the manufacture of wind turbines and hybrid cars. The most recent alarming report, by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, tells us Glasgow will need 1344 wind turbines by 2050 and Edinburgh's cars will have to be cut by a third. Inverness will have to be a model of eco-brilliance and will have to be forbidden from its planned expansion

The UK grid does not have this huge resource "elsewhere" as we are an islanded electrical network. As wind grows toward government's targets, we would need either a ludicrous and vulnerable enlargement of our tiny connection to Europe or further investment in thermal generating capacity to support 'compulsory' windpower for a miniscule saving of CO2 emission.

Obviously, there are other ways in which the Lewis wind farm electricity can be managed so as to effect some small reductions in carbon emissions, but a figure of 600,000 tonnes per annum (your report, 6 February) is clearly absurd. The only long-term benefit of the Lewis wind farm will come at the end of it's 20-year lifetime, when, with the Beauly to Denny pylon line in place, the newly industrialised area of Barvas Moor will be the ideal site to place a 1000MW "clean energy" nuclear plant.