Plans for ‘England’s largest onshore wind farm’ take step forward
Rochdale Online reported (10th January 2025) that Plans for ‘England’s largest onshore wind farm’ take step forward.
As expected the article is a promotional piece presumably lodged by Cubico, that highlights the supposed benefits with no consideration of the costs, both in terms of financial costs to consumers or to the environment.
As we highlighted in our article The costs and benefits of Net Zero, the expected benefits quoted by Cubico of their £200m investment are dwarfed into insignificance by the costs to households of the UK’s renewable energy policy. Various bodies have estimated these costs of NetZero to households, the most authoritative being NetZero Watch. They have broken down both the direct cost of subsidies hidden in our energy bills (£348) and indirect costs (£1,772), in their report Net Zero cost at least £2000 per household.
Most of this cost is not visible to consumers – even to the few that are aware of the direct costs. Did you know your household is paying this over £2,000/year?
What does this mean over the lifetime of a wind farm, which Cubico are saying will be 40 years? Even if we only consider the approximate population served by Rochdale and Rossendale Councils, this equates to about 120,823 (from latest council data).
Multiple £2,000 x 120,823 households x 40 years and the figure comes to £9.83bn! Yes, you read that right nearly 10 billion pounds!
Now of course Cubico would not receive this amount, as this is what is being ploughed into subsidising renewables over the period. Many renewable energy companies will benefit. Guess who won’t benefit?
Full article here:
Household data:
https://www.rochdale.gov.uk/information-data-governance/census-2021?form=MG0AV3