Three views on the
Fairburn Wind Farm, Inverness

From Neil Hornsby, Green Party

Sir: top marks to the operators of the Fairburn wind farm for hosting a visit by Inverness Royal Academy pupils.

Such opportunities provide vital hands-on experience for students.....in fact, Highland and Islands Greens have called for all new wind farms to be designated as visitor attractions.

In response to Highland Council's public consultation on wind farm planning guidance, we suggested each wind farm should have a sizeable visitor-interpretation facility....

We argued that such facilities could attract many visitors, provide a useful educational tool and overall aid the acceptability of wind farms.

From N.W, Inverness

....It makes me wonder if any of these politicians, intent on devastating our landscapes and rural communities with industrial wind factories, have ever read one word of the argument against such developments.

Economic, environmental and social benefits are not words often attributed to wind power by independent engineers, scientists, economists and environmentalists.

Should our young people be educated by wind farm operators who are motivated by subsidies?

Students and school children are already subjected to information packs supplied by energy companies in their places of learning. This is hardly impartial teaching.




From A.F, Scotland:

What absolute nonsense from Neil Hornsby of the Green Party in his praise of Fairburn wind farm.

Operators of Fairburn and other wind factories would have only one interest in the visit by school children: to indoctrinate them with pro-wind propaganda.

The value of wind energy which he talks about relates only to the huge subsidies which operators and landowners receive, and which are paid for by the consumer.

His idea of each wind factory having a sizeable visitor interpretation facility is ludicrous. Would visitors ever be told the truth about the subsidies? Or how unreliable, inefficient, intermittent and expensive wind energy is?

The load factor for Fairburn between 2011 and 2012 was 13 percent.

Without these subsidies the turbines would never be built.

Wind power is not green, not clean and it is not cheap.




The Royal Academy of Engineering estimates the cost of energy production (pence per Kilowatt hour) as

Gas Fired 2.2
Nuclear 2.3 (including decommissioning)
Coal 2.5 to 3.2
On-shore Wind 5 to 7