What should be our reaction to daft
stories like the one recently reported in the Daily Mail about the 60ft wind
turbine put up by the Welsh government outside its offices in Aberystwyth to
proclaim to the world just how ‘green’ it is?
Erected at a cost of £50,000 to the taxpayer, it turned out that
this turbine was so absurdly inefficient it was providing only £5 worth
of electricity a month. It would take more than 750 years to make the
money back.
In recent years, we have seen plenty of
little tales like this, showing how often those who build these mini-turbines
just to promote the wonders of wind power seem to get horribly caught out.
There was, for instance, the windmill
put up next to a school in Portland, Dorset, which had to be switched off
because it was killing so many seagulls that the headmaster had to come in
early every morning to remove their corpses, so the children wouldn’t be upset.
