Hysterical nonsense - Ecotricity boss responds to Christopher Booker

26 June 2008

The Daily Mail published this article by Christopher Booker today, regarding Ecotricity's newly constructed Shooter's Bottom Wind Park.

Dale Vince responded:

"This is a piece of hysterical nonsense from Christopher Booker. It's hard to know where to start. Did the planning inspector really throw out all planning rules when he approved that turbine near where Christopher lives - just so we can meet EU targets? Of course not.

Read his report and you'll see he discarded the spurious reasons for refusal of the local council and actually upheld planning policy. And do we really need to build new conventional generators to back up new wind generators as we build them? Simple intelligence should tell us not.

As new wind generators get built they replace conventional sources (when the wind blows) and those conventional sources become the stand-by that wind needs (for when the wind does not blow).

Pretty simple really. And that 90% figure is rubbish. I won't go on. This piece by Christopher Booker is personal prejudice masquerading as journalism. Too often that seems to be the definition of tabloid articles..."