Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Edinburgh Council explores 'urban turbines'

Edinburgh Council has a policy of promoting and supporting community renewables.  It is also keen to find a way of setting up an energy co-operative.   A body has been set up (The Edinburgh Community Energy Co-operative) which will have a meeting in April which will have a range of council staff present.  The following is from the text of an answer to a council question on the order paper for tomorrow's meeting of Edinburgh Council:
The purpose of this meeting will be to identify specific opportunities for the Council to facilitate the development and expansion of community energy projects across the city and to share information.. . . an important context for this meeting is (amongst three other bullet points) . . 

•  Community-scale renewable electricity generating projects (e.g. urban wind turbines)
Any urban wind turbine in Edinburgh is unlikely to be feasible.  Of course it might benefit from feed in tariffs and other public funding. A significant proportion of feed in tariffs currently take money from the poor and redistribute to land owners and large companies.   A sort if Robin Hood in reverse.

In this policy, Council staff and resources are now being invested in exploring an outcome which is harebrained.   The evidence is that at the best of times wind turbines are not economic and save little by way of emissions.

Now how could the council staff be used to save public money - not throw it away.

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