![\"\"](\"http:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/08\/wind_turbines_landscape_visual_impact.jpg\" "\\"wind_turbines_landscape_visual_impact\\"")
<\/a>Wind turbines beside a motorway in North West France (image courtesy P-Y B\u00e9gin)<\/p><\/div> Big landowners have the easiest job getting planning permission for wind turbines, because the only people who live within sight are likely to be their tenants. Wind farm subsidies were about \u00a31bn in 2012, though the rate of subsidy was cut by 10% this year. I drove past an ugly wind farm in Scotland this […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,24],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8695"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8695"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8695\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8695"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8695"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.gardenvisit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8695"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBig landowners have the easiest job getting planning permission for wind turbines, because the only people who live within sight are likely to be their tenants. Wind farm subsidies were about \u00a31bn in 2012<\/a>, though the rate of subsidy was cut by 10% this year. I drove past an ugly wind farm in Scotland this year, with 22 turbines dominating the landscape. The visual impact was grim, so I began to wonder about their financial impact. With the advantage of generous subsidies, Merryn Somerset Webb<\/a> calculates that each turbine will yield the owner a profit of \u00a3200,000\/year for 20 years. This amounts to \u00a34m over the period, or \u00a388m for the group of turbines. This lets the ‘generous’ company which developed the scheme give \u00a31m to the local community over the 20 year period. A landowner who allows a turbine on his land can expect a rent of \u00a31m over the period (\u00a350,000\/year). So why not follow the French example and locate the turbines on land beside motorways<\/a>? This would keep the two sorts of ugliness together and remind motorists that they should be using electricity to power their vehicles. The airflow from vehicles might even be used, with special turbines<\/a>, to generate electricity when there is no wind. Noise barriers could designed to deflect air currents to roadside turbines.
\nAt present, visitors to the UK probably conclude that UK policy is to splat wind turbines anywhere in the landscape, providing only that no wealthy people, except landowners, live near them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"