Hi Jon
The big multinational energy companies would certainly like you to believe that ‘renewable energy makes undeniable sense’, but unfortunately, from an environmental and ecological viewpoint, they are all too ‘deniable’.
Turbines are a classic point. They’re big and in your face - so politicians love them as it seems like they’re doing something about climate change. But start scratching beneath the big business hype and it’s clear they’re just another form of (highly lucrative) industrialisation.
For a start, they’re made out of tonnes of steel and plastic, require vast amounts of concrete to be poured into the earth to anchor them and that’s just the start. Miles of access roads and power line have to constructed to service their intermittent output, and they're usually built across some of the least despoiled parts of Britain.
By the time you take into consideration all the CO2 that’s emitted during construction, it’s reckoned that a lot of these developments will be lucky to be simply carbon neutral by the time their projected 20-25 year lifespan is up.
On top of this, much of the rare earth Neodymium, which used in the dynamos, comes from China where the toxic waste from its quarrying and production is leaving a horrendous legacy of pollution and public health problems.
As one renewables consultant candidly admitted to me recently, from an environmental point of view there’s no point in building all this infrastructure when energy demand continues to go up and up. You can’t reduce CO2 emissions just using the supply side – you have to do something about the demand side – something that is signally not in the energy companies’ interests.
Instead he acceded that the scheme he was planning was being undertaken simply in order to make money for his client – in this particular case absentee American owners of an estate in a well known and very beautiful part of the Highlands.
I’m afraid this is far from an isolated case. You’ll find most of the renewables projects being undertaken are being driven by very cynical financial motives – rather than any actual concern for the environment. RWE, the massive German company behind the Allt Duinne scheme for example, also happens to be one of the world’s largest coal traders – hardly the kind of folk who have the planet’s best interests at heart you might think…
