THE windfarm developers have turned greedy eyes on our least-spoiled coasts and hills since the Government introduced a handsome subsidy for wind-generated electricity in 1991.

There are hundreds of windfarm proposals currently on the drawing board and a particularly damaging one is planned for Darwen Moor - 20 huge industrial structures the height of 25-storey tower blocks.

To try to persuade us to accept the industrialisation of our hills for their profit, the wind lobby puts out a lot of green propaganda.

But wind energy will not close a single nuclear power station. Former Welsh Secretary John Redwood confirmed this in evidence to a House of Commons Select Committee on Wind Energy in 1994. And since 1991, when wind 'farms' arrived in the UK, the proportion of our electricity produced by nuclear plants has risen from just over 20 per cent to over 30 per cent.

UK windfarms will have no measurable impact on global warming. If we accepted 20,000 600kW turbines in our landscape we would reduce the global problem of carbon dioxide emissions by 0.07 per cent.

Wind generated electricity is not free, or even cheap. Electricity from windfarms currently operating costs between one and a half and four and a half times as much as conventional electricity. The modern wind turbine is 240 feet high - the height of a 24 storey office block. It is very noisy and can be seen for up to 20 miles. They reduce house values and damage TV reception.

The largest windfarm in Europe takes a year to produce the electricity produced in two days by a conventional power station.l+2l-2 To produce any significant amount of electricity, there would have to be forests of turbines on every hill. Wind developers are not "green." National Wind Power is owned by National Power, which has been applying to burn one of the dirtiest fuels known, Orimulsion, at its Pembrokeshire power station. Scottish Power owns wind "farms" in Wales and Ireland, but is increasing its coal burn in its conventional power stations.f=Zurich Bd BTROBERT WOODWARD, Vice Chairman, Country Guardian, Riverside, Twickenham, Middlesex.

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