The state and the Irish taxpayer are paying around €1.2 billion every year to prop up the wind industry, a new report has claimed.
This is according to Wind Aware Ireland’s new report ‘The Costs of Wind Energy in Ireland’ which was released today.
The report says that “billions have been spent, emissions are rising and there’s no accountability.
“Irish consumers and the State are spending approximately €1.2 billion per year to prop up wind energy.”
It also claims that simply converting Moneypoint power station to gas would save more CO2 than all wind turbines currently constructed.
The report has been broken down into a number of key findings:
- This €1.2 billion spend on wind results is an approximate saving of 3 per cent of our overall CO2 emissions. This is clearly unsustainable as Ireland moves to reduce emissions by 20 to 30 per cent.
- No analysis by the Irish State or by the EU have been undertaken to justify these enormous costs.
- No alternative methods of reducing our CO2 emissions have been adequately considered or analysed.
- No legally mandated Cost Benefit Analysis, required by the Public Spending Code, has been completed. Nor has a Strategic Environmental Assessment, mandated by the EU been undertaken.
- This huge infrastructural project, which impacts upon our economy, our environment and our people, has been allowed to proceed based on opinion, assumptions and group-think.
The report concludes: “This developer-led waste of scarce resources and subsidy-driven frenzy must stop.
“Calm and rational analysis must be undertaken to ascertain how we as a country can best reduce our emissions.”
Laois has had a somewhat chequered past when it comes to this area.
Councillors voted in June to make Laois a wind farm-free zone but this was subsequently overruled by a ministerial direction a few months later.
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