Subsidy Farms

GWPF
"One cold-calling letter passed to The Sunday Telegraph reveals how energy companies are trawling the Land Registry in the race to find suitable sites for turbines.

The letter, sent by a company in Suffolk to a farmer in Northumberland, states: "By hosting a wind energy project, this could provide a secondary source of income by diversifying the use of the land, which we would estimate could be in the region of £18,000 per turbine per annum." The letter suggests the piece of land identified would be suitable for four wind turbines with a capacity of two to three megawatts.

Dr John Constable, director of the Renewable Energy Foundation, a think tank which has criticised the cost of green subsidies for wind farms, said each turbine, which would need to be about 400ft high, would generate in the region of £660,000 a year in income for the developer. Approximately half of that income comes from selling electricity to the National Grid but the rest - about £330,000 - comes in the form of a consumer subsidy intended to encourage the growth in wind energy.

In other words, the one field in Northumberland identified by the energy company would generate about £2.64 million in income a year."