TURBINES: Less costly than floods

Its subjective views that wind turbines will scar ‘our iconic tourist landscape for decades’ appears pessimistic when considered against some very pragmatic facts.

These being, firstly, that tourism in Northumberland is booming and visitors are spending. Visitor numbers increased from 8.8million in 2013 to 9.3million in 2014.

The value of the tourist economy increased 8.4 per cent within the years from 2011 to 2014. People are still visiting and loving this wonderful region in their droves.

Secondly, wind turbines certainly haven’t put off the television crews recently filming for Robson Green, Downton Abbey, Beowolf and Vera, so I can’t see any damage caused to our national reputation there.

However, where I can see damage is over on the west coast of Britain in the form of hundreds of thousands of people’s homes ruined and over £5billion in cost to the economy.

The Prime Minister has blamed these floods on man-made climate change. The scientific consensus is that this is exactly the kind of event that we will see more of with an increase in world temperatures due to an increase in carbon emissions.

Wind turbines are a very low carbon emission form of generating energy. I know wind turbines are not perfect, but a cleaner, renewable source of power generation has to be part of the solution to tackle climate change.

Wind turbines need to be part of this solution. They are much less costly than cleaning up after the devastation of the floods.

I’m just grateful to be living in a wonderful part of the world with a home, thankfully, above water, and if a few wind turbines are the price to pay then I accept that.

Peter Edge,

Hobberlaw Farm Cottages,

Alnwick