Why don't we use the wind instead of complaining about it? There is, of course, plenty to complain about damage to buildings, trees etc and disruption of traffic, to shipping and air schedules, for example. But it has its uses. Dries out the land after winter says a landscaper friend. A special use for it is argued by Jonathan Porritt, well-known British Green. He claims, in a recent magazine article, that Britain is eight times windier than Germany, but Germany has seven times as much wind-generated electricity as Britain. You'd think that, poking out into the Atlantic, we'd have more wind even than Britain.
Anyway, Porritt is all for this "increasingly cost-effective" energy source, which can replace, to some extent, the CO2 emissions from fossil fuels. At best, wind farms could contribute 10 per cent of Britain's electricity by the year 2025. Not much, maybe, but not to be despised. And, with subsidy, it competes with coal and nuclear power. And the latest model wind turbines (windmills) are not noisy and disturbing, he warns. That article was in BBC Wildlife.
Here, Michael Kelly, Press Officer of the ESB, faxes that the department of Transport, Energy and Communications ran a competition on Alternative Energy Requirement in 1994. Private developers were invited to compete to provide 75 megawatts of power to the ESB grid. Huge response, and 35 projects, producing one hundred and eleven megawatts, were successful. They should be in operation this year.
Ten wind power projects were successful. They are in Donegal (6), Leitrim, Clare and Tipperary. Also eight Combined Heat and Power projects "a very efficient method of generation" three in Dublin, two in Dundalk, one in Kilkenny City and two in Cork City. Landfill Gas Projects were approved at tipheads in Dublin and Tramore. So dumps have their uses. Then, too, there were ten hydro-electric projects.
All sell their electricity to the ESB, and in total will supply power to 100,000 homes; thus, goes the fax, increasing the amount of electricity from renewable energy forms by 50 per cent. When turbines are already on the island, of course, reaching as far out as Rathlin.
Correction: Senator Joseph Connolly's memoirs were described in Tuesday's In Time's Eye as `fantastic'. What was written was `fascinating'.