Niall Stuart, chief executive of Scottish Renewables, said: "These proposals could block wind power in most of the country with worrying consequences for the industry, for communities and landowners and for the Scottish economy.

Energy Policy UK

Nobody with a sense of fiscal responsibility could endorse the massive subsidies being lavished on wind power which, as we report, are being maintained despite the Government's proclaimed culture of austerity. ...the Government's EU-prescribed goal of providing 20 per cent of the country's energy requirements from ''renewables'' by 2020 does not look realistic or financially responsible.

Taxes & Subsidies Energy Policy UK

When asked by Politics.co.uk how community input into onshore wind farm development would work in practice, Davey said the debate would be between the communities and the developers - and that it would not be helpful for the government to impose strict regulations on how the dialogue progressed.

Impact on People Energy Policy UK

We all want to help to protect the environment and it would be nice to rely entirely on clean energy sources. But solar energy comes with plenty of problems. Its impact upon the landscape is likely to be significant: the level of solar power that Mr Barker wants would necessitate erecting solar panels of up to 10ft tall across an area more than 100 times the size of London's Olympic Park.

Taxes & Subsidies Energy Policy UK

A new analysis of government and industry figures shows that wind turbine owners received £1.2billion in the form of a consumer subsidy, paid by a supplement on electricity bills last year. They employed 12,000 people, to produce an effective £100,000 subsidy on each job. The disclosure is potentially embarrassing for the wind industry, which claims it is an economically dynamic sector that creates jobs.

Taxes & Subsidies Energy Policy UK

The Conservatives have taken a tougher line on wind farms in recent months, and this week unveiled plans to give communities a powerful ‘veto' over controversial new onshore developments. Schemes will have to gain local residents' consent before a planning application can even be made, effectively handing them the power to prevent turbines being erected.

Impact on People Energy Policy Impact on Landscape UK

The government and its cheerleaders wrap the drive to zero CO2 emissions in the language of growth, jobs, investment and innovation. ...and claims the energy bill will create 250,000 jobs. Even if that is achievable, it's the product of the single-entry bookkeeping so common in political green-energy projections. You can create any number of jobs putting up subsidized windmills or installing solar panels. But if in the process you drive up energy costs or taxes throughout the economy, you're bound to destroy more work than you create.

Energy Policy Impact on Economy UK

Investment in green energy in the UK has plummeted to its lowest level in four years, according to new figures from Bloomberg, with campaigners claiming that much of the blame can be pinned on the Government's failure to set a target date for cleaning up the power sector.

Energy Policy Impact on Economy UK

It is now evident there has been a failure to prepare for this additional supply from new areas by providing extra capacity on the grid. The constraint periods are becoming longer and the payments larger, undermining the progress from fossil fuels towards green energy. Wind farm operators in Scotland have received almost £6 million in payments to stop producing electricity over 33 days between mid-April and mid-May.

Energy Policy Impact on Economy UK

Energy bills are rising so steeply that they could overtake mortgage repayments in parts of Britain in just five years' time, the chief executive of supplier, First Utility, has claimed. utility bill. Analysis by First Utility shows that UK dual-fuel bills have risen by an average of 8.5pc a year over the last five years to reach current levels of £1,420.

Energy Policy Impact on Economy UK

The European Union's utopian scheme of transforming itself into a green energy powerhouse is faltering as its fantasy plan is colliding with reality. As the EU's economic and financial crisis deepens and unemployment continues to rise, what used to be an almost all-embracing green consensus is beginning to disintegrate.

Energy Policy UK

Power companies operating wind farms in Scotland were paid more than £1 million to shut down their turbines for a single day last month, Scotland on Sunday can reveal. ...The so-called "constraint payments" are paid by the National Grid to energy companies when energy supply outstrips demand - turbines are switched off so they stop producing electricity to rebalance the system.

Energy Policy Impact on Economy UK

Bureaucrats in charge of the Government's controversial green policies have benefited from a multi-million-pound bonus bonanza since the last election. The total amount of performance-related handouts given to civil servants at the Department for Energy and Climate Change has almost tripled since Labour's final year in office to £9million.

Energy Policy UK

The true pace at which wind farms are spreading across Scotland's countryside has been disclosed after official figures indicated the number of turbines increased by a third in the last year alone. ...Struan Stevenson, a Scottish Tory MEP, said the DECC figures were "perfectly symbolic of how pathetically useless and inefficient the whole technology of wind is."

Energy Policy UK

Last week, we also lost two more of our major coal-fired power stations, forced to close down by an EU pollution directive - leading the head of our second-largest power company, SSE, to warn our generating capacity is being cut back so far that major blackouts may soon be inevitable.

Energy Policy UK

There is some good news, however. As we report today, government sources have said that wind power subsidies are to be cut again. This is a move in the right direction and we very much welcome it.

Energy Policy UK

When E.O. Wilson said "people would rather believe than know", he perfectly summed up the state of modern environmentalism; the movement which has been radicalised to the extent that its policies are now characterised by senseless agendas better described as anti-science, anti-business and even anti-human; rather than pro-environment.

Energy Policy UK

Vestas Wind Systems A/S (VWS), Areva SA (AREVA) and four other power-generation manufacturers wrote to ministers saying the U.K. risks falling behind European peers and choking job creation by stalling a decision on setting a carbon target.

Energy Policy UK

Europe's plans for offshore wind power up to 2020 could be as much as 50 billion euros ($65.55 billion) short of funding, the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) said in a study released on Thursday.

Energy Policy Offshore Wind Europe UK

Around lunchtime last Monday National Grid was showing that all our 4,300 wind turbines put together were providing barely a thousandth of the power we were using, a paltry 31MW ...successive governments have fallen for the delusion that we can depend for nearly a third of our future power on those useless and unreliable windmills.

Energy Policy UK