By Paul Homewood
h/t AC Osborn
The Daily Mail has an interesting insight into the riches we to wind farms at the expense of billpayers:
The Cabrach and Glenfiddich Estates cover almost 50,000 scenic acres of Morayshire at the north-eastern end of the Grampian Mountains.
Owned by Christopher Moran, a colourful Tory donor who made his fortune in the City of London, they take in grouse moors, a salmon river, a pheasant shoot and some of the finest stalking ground in all of Scotland.
There are also some 18 tenanted farms, endless estate cottages, and a grand 17-bedroom lodge, which once belonged to the Dukes of Richmond and Gordon and boasts a ping-pong room decorated with oil paintings by Thomas Gainsborough.
Moran, who is 77, acquired this pile via two transactions, in 1979 and 1982.
A keen shot, he describes his hobbies in Who’s Who as ‘architecture, opera, art, politics and country pursuits’, and once told an interviewer that Cabrach and Glenfiddich gave him ‘sanity’, saying: ‘In London I can work 24 hours a day. But here, I unwind.’
Lately, the wealthy laird’s perks have been more than just sporting. For recent events have turned his picturesque Highland seat into one of rural Britain’s most prolific cash machines.
Historically, this was one of the finest unspoiled views in Scotland. But today, the skyline is broken by 59 gargantuan steel turbines of the Dorenell Wind Farm.
Each of them stands 126 metres tall and sits on land that has been leased by Moran to the French energy giant EDF.
Read the full story here.
Dorenell is being paid £116.79/MWh this year under its CfD, and this price will go up each year for inflation. Market prices since April have averaged £59/MWh.
https://register.lowcarboncontracts.uk/AAA-DOR-182/
It began operations in 2018, having won a heavily subsidised contract just before David Cameron pulled the plug on subsidies for onshore wind. This ban has, of course, since been lifted by Miliband.
To date, Dorenell has been paid a sum of £49.6 million in subsidies, over and above its income from sales of electricity. As the Mail reports, Dorenell has also received millions more in constraint payments.
So the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer. Meanwhile the countryside is ruined.
Welcome to Britain’s “Clean” Energy revolution!
Click this link for the original source of this article.
Author: Paul Homewood
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