Britain’s only large-scale wind turbine manufacturer to close

Vestas, the wind turbine manufacturing plant in Newport on the Isle of Wight is set to close this week despite a government pledge only hours earlier to build a green economy. There is a Friends of the Earth campaign about it here, urging the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills to save the UK’s wind power industry.

All of this comes at a time when the UK govenment has been accused of having an energy policy that’s too focused on wind power, and when companies trying to increase the UK’s supply of wind power such as Ecotricity are fighting years-long planning battles with local councils to install any. Dorset, the county where I live, has no wind turbines at all and one planning proposal was recently turned down by the council despite having been recommended by their own planning officers.

It’s a mad world.