THERE was a feel-good factor for local residents when the wind turbine application for Coleford was refused at the last Planning Committee, meeting using the new 'Core Strategy' document to good effect.

The article in your paper the day after regarding the 'commercial' turbine at St Briavels and possibly at four other places in the South Forest took the edge off it for me.

I recall a couple of years ago when this was passed by the Planning Committee, some councillors enthused about sustainable power generation for the needs of a local farm and business. I had no insight at the time but it did not feel right to have a seriously large turbine in the area, the precedent it might set, and the unquantified but potentially serious effects on tourism.

If the article is correct, and from the wind generation details I have learned since, I can see this turning out to be a subterfuge and possibly a big mistake.

1. It appears that these turbines are being organised on a commercial, profit making basis and scale – not individual local power needs – and I am sure that this is not what the Planning Committee had in mind as it does nothing for the local community and at what price (the Coleford turbine was to be imported from Germany and no local jobs or benefit would be gained).

2. Land-based wind generation at the moment is one of the most inefficient and ineffectual ways of energy generation – around 20 per cent except in the most exposed and windy areas. Currently, if the wind blows too hard the turbines have to be turned off, and when overall generating capacity exceeds needs it is the wind farms which are switched off because it is easy, not the carbon emitting power stations, while the tax payer carries on paying compensation for the generating income lost.

The Government secretly accepts it has made a big mistake in its assessment of wind generation and so we are in a farcical situation allowing our landscapes to be blighted by these ineffectual turbines erected carelessly by commercial enterprises profiting from taxpayers' money.

Some turbines will be useful in the future, in the right places, but only when we have resolved and built the means to store vast amounts of excess energy (as at the Dinorwig facility in Wales). Until then they are an expensive carbuncle on our valuable landscape.

– Walt Williams, Coleford.