Scotland’s wind power scam is positively criminal: foreign-owned wind power outfits have pocket tens of £billions in subsidies; working-class Scots struggle to pay crippling power bills – plenty of them have no hope of powering their homes ever again.
A further obscenity is the fact that wind farms in Scotland are routinely paid hundreds of £millions each year to NOT produce any electricity, at all: World’s Biggest Scams: Scotland’s Wind Farms Paid £650,000,000 To NOT Produce Power
The cost of wind power subsidies to Scottish power consumers is staggering, and it continues to mount. As Gareth Rose outlines below.
It’s the SNP’s green dream, yet firms are handed millions every year to run Scotland’s wind farms… and YOU are paying for it
The Scottish Mail on Sunday
Gareth Rose
1 November 2020
Wind farms are being handed record subsidies in a move that is driving up power bills for hard-pressed families.
The operators were last year given an uprecedented £1.3 billion, analysis shows.
The payments were made under a scheme set up almost 20 years ago to lure firms into what was then the uncertain field of green energy.
But the subsidies have continued even though wind farms are well established and highly profitable.
Last night, critics warned that the payments were effectively doubling the cost of household energy bills and called for the ‘disgraceful’ scheme to be scrapped.
The eye-watering cost of propping up Scotland’s renewable sector is the result of the Renewables Obligation scheme, introduced in 2002 by the UK Government.
It was designed to give financial support to green energy projects in their early days, but signed as part of 15 or 20-year contracts that continue today. That is despite many of the owners – often foreign-based – earning millions in profits.
Scots renewable energy firms have claimed more than £10 billion through the scheme, proportionally far higher than any other part of the UK, according to the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF).
The cash is paid by energy suppliers to those generating the power, and the cost passed onto UK consumers in their bills.
The biggest winner has been ScottishPower Renewables’ Whitelee wind farm, near Glasgow, which has received £476 million since 2002. The company, owned by Spanish giant Iberdrola, recorded an £867 million net profit in 2019.
Other renewable developments to have benefited include Robin Rigg, in the Solway Firth, which has received £460 million, and Clyde wind farm, in Lanarkshire, which has been given £426 million.
Robin Rigg is owned by German energy giant E.ON. Its UK arm, E.ON Energy, recorded a £73 million loss last year. Scottish firm SSE owns the majority of Clyde, which made a £5.7 million profit.
However, in a sign of the value of such subsidised projects, SSE sold a 49.9 per cent stake in it in 2016 for £355 million. The subsidies have been analysed by charity REF, using figures from market regulator Ofgem. REF also questioned whether the scheme would be affordable under independence, with the full cost loaded onto consumers north of the Border, where there are proportionately more projects.
Its director, Dr John Constable, said: ‘The subsidy supporting the Scottish Government’ s renewables policy is paid for by UK consumers and will strike many as disgraceful. In the event of independence, UK bill-payers will expect better value for money, and cross-border subsidies are unlikely to continue. ‘Has the Scottish Government thought this through?’ Graham Lang, of campaign group Scotland Against Spin, said: ‘The burden of subsidies on ordinary citizens is out of control and that money is largely going into the pockets of foreign companies and a few wealthy individuals.’
The SNP has hailed Scotland’s green energy sector as a lucrative success story, with the then First Minister Alex Salmond famously claiming the country would become the ‘Saudi Arabia of renewables’.
However, REF shows the sector is still heavily reliant on subsidies.
Under the Renewables Obligation scheme, which was closed to new entrants in 2017, suppliers must show they are using an increasing amount of renewable energy. According to REF, they typically pay an extra £55 per megawatt per hour for doing so – almost double the wholesale cost of energy and a cost that is passed onto customers.
The Scottish Mail on Sunday
STOP THESE THINGS 
Crispin bpm, you might find this article at wattsupwiththat interesting:
We might be dealing with a pernicious global ‘idea pathogen’.
Scotland, along with California, Australia, Germany and others, is learning the hard way that wind and solar power has no value on the grid. The only way to avoid blackouts is with enough fossil fuel power on hand to address periods of maximum demand. As a result, money spent on renewables is for nothing in return. On the road to 100% renewables, rates need to double and more while emissions continue as before.
These machines are the calling card of a New World Order. Wherever they are built erases that locations sense of identity as one wind farm looks much the same as any other. And they are NOT farms. They are batteries of industrial scale wind turbines. Legions of batteries marching across the landscape. And the communities who get in their way are effectively exposed to ‘assault and battery.’
And yet it was a Scot who supposedly invented the World’s first wind turbine. How ironic that the only client he could sell his mad invention to was the Montrose Lunatic Asylum.
How appropriate.
Crispin bpm, your comment, “And the communities who get in their way are effectively exposed to ‘assault and battery.’ ” is especially true in rural communities where these turbines surround peoples’ homes here in Ontario.
Ontario ratepayers will subsidize the largest wind project for another 15 years until the contract ends, if this contract is not cancelled.
The transgenerational debt that this failed experiment has caused ought to be considered criminal. It can not be justified, especially now that the ‘debt tsunami’ from Covid-19 lockdowns is a reality that the people of Ontario are facing.
https://financialpost.com/executive/executive-summary/posthaste-canada-is-leading-the-debt-tsunami-now-sweeping-the-world
“In a world awash with debt, Canada is now a global leader.
A new report by the Institute of International Finance reveals that Canada saw the biggest jump in non-financial sector debt this year, beating Japan, the U.S. and the U.K.”
Sounds grim Sommer. A bleak outlook for Ontario. In my opinion, these are not wind farms, these are wind batteries. The Merriam-Webster definition describes a battery as, “ …a number of similar articles, items, or devices arranged, connected, or used together.”
Curiously wind farms (or wind batteries) would also appear to be anti democratic, anti equality, anti identity or sense of place, and they are white! In fact based on that description, are wind farms racist?
How ironic that coal is black.
Hypocrisy writ large.