Vestas Blades, Britain’s only wind turbine manufacturing factory, shut down operations and announced closure yesterday. The decision to close down has been blamed on a lack of demand for wind turbine parts in Northern Europe and the effects of the global financial problems currently affecting the world.
Workers at the plant have been given 90 days’ notice of the imminent redundancies, however environmental campaigners Greenpeace have questioned whether Gordon Brown could have done more to prevent the factory having to close down, commenting that although last week’s Budget commitment is a positive move, it is “too little too late”.
Even though companies such as green energy company Ecotricity are promoting and spending significant amounts of money per customer on new wind farm developments, and the government has its targets for reducing emissions and increasing the percentage of the nation’s energy that is generated from renewable sources such as wind power, the announced closure shows that it is not enough.
Investment in renewable energy, not just wind power, but solar power, wave and tidal energy and biomass needs to become the priority for our governments. And what is the answer from other energy giants such as Eon, EDF and RWE? Well despite the advertisements showing Eon’s passion for wind power, both they and EDF are more concerned with pressing on with the new generation of nuclear power stations. RWE have sunk even lower, with one proposed site for a new nuclear station being that of an existing efficient and important wind farm in Cumbria.
It has long been known that nuclear and renewables don’t get along, so the conflict has been almost inevitable and only time will tell who the winner will be. However is there really sense in going from the energy intensive process of powering Britain with fossil fuels, to another energy intensive method with nuclear power?
Other items you might find of interest:
- Vestas Workers Lose The Battle To Keep Wind Turbine Factory Open
- Friends Of The Earth Call On Government To Save British Wind Power Jobs
- Lack of Engineers Put Offshore Wind Farm Development at Risk
Tags: nuclear, renewable energy, vestas blades, wind turbines
This is sad news for the green movement in Europe
I agree James, it’s very sad. Especially when you consider that losing the production of turbines in Britain means that parts will have to be shipped from Europe, so there will be more carbon emissions to build a turbine. It seems such a shame that when the UK government were prepared to pour money into a failing car industry, they can’t do something to help the renewables industry…