Meanwhile, we stupid Brits are shutting our remaining coal fired power stations
This is an argument that has raged in the Lounge for years but in a nutshell we have windmills because the govt committed itself to the EU 20:20:20 agreement which obliges the UK to 'demonstrate' that it is generating 20% of it's energy needs from renewables and has reduced it's CO2 emissions by 20% by 2020. You can blame Tony Bliar for signing us up to this but having signed the agreement, there was really only one off the shelf renewable technology that the UK govt could use to meet this commitment and that was windmills. All the other stuff, nuclear, tidal, wave power etc was never going to be online by 2020 so when anybody asks we have not invested in this stuff or only invested belatedly as in nuclear, blame the EU 20:20:20 agreement. And the reason I say 'demonstrated' that the UK is generating 20% of it's energy needs from renewables, is that windmills are excellent for doing that because their rated (ie max) generated capacity is so much higher than their actual capacity. So there was a good reason why the UK govt bet the ranch on windmills but that reason had nothing to do with generating cheap reliable renewable energyIf WM consume more power than they provide, why have them.
I read that during the estimated life span of a Windmill, 15-20 years, that the amount of energy used in the manufacture of the material for the WM, including the estimated energy used in the maintenance programme, exceeds the estimated output of the WM over its life span. ....