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Western Morning News
           
         TV BOTANIST OPPOSED TO WIND FARMS                  
         
                                           
  09:00  -  26 November 2003  
 
 Famed environmental campaigner Professor David Bellamy yesterday backed Noel
 Edmonds' anti-wind farm campaign, describing them as a "scam".
 
 The botanist, writer and broadcaster is a staunch opponent of wind turbines
 arguing that they are inefficient, destroy the landscape and that far more
 could be achieved through energy efficiency.
 
 "My main thing against them is that they can only work, if you are very lucky,
 for 30 per cent of the time," he said yesterday. "Going by the ones in Denmark
 it is about 17 per cent of the time.
 
 "So how are people going to be able to boil their kettles, or how are we going
 to power our hospitals the rest of the time? It means that we have got to keep
 our other stations running, spinning in reserve, inefficiently and pouring out
 carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide and the like."
 
 Prof Bellamy, who has 15 years worth of research on the subject, has
 successfully opposed a number of proposed sites across the country.
 
 He believes that the amount of taxpayers money ploughed into such schemes make
 them a "scam" given the scant electrical and environmental benefits they
 provide. The Kyoto Protocol - the very reason why renewable forms of energy,
 like windfarms, were being pushed by the Government - was also collapsing, he
 added.
 
 "If they were producing a decent amount of power I would be backing them," he
 said. "But if you lagged the roofs of 500 homes it would have the effect of
 putting up one wind turbine. That is what we should be doing."
 
 He first met Mr Edmonds, who lives at Jacobstowe, near Okehampton, in the 1970s
 on the Saturday morning television programme The Multicoloured Swap Shop.
 
 But he has praised Mr Edmonds opposition to wind farms which he said also
 "damaged rural lifestyles and the tourist industry".
 
 "If I wanted to build an executive home in an area of outstanding natural
 beauty (AONB)  I wouldn't be allowed," he said yesterday.  "And yet these
 turbines are 22 storeys high and put on hills where everyone can see them. They
 also kill birds and bats and need 1,000 tonnes of concrete as well as a road
 infrastructure. It beggars belief that some environmental groups can say they
 are 'green'."
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