No wind power for half of England's counties

Shockingly, 21 out of the UK's 41 counties don't have a wind turbine and eight of them have no plans whatsoever to introduce them. The government is making the planning process quicker for micro energy generation at home (under 250kWh) and for huge power generation (over 50 megawatts), but hardly anything in between. 

Planning applications take an average of two years, so many counties are put off by wind power -- a great shame indeed, but hardly surprising. It took Somerset four years for its wind farm to be approved before green energy company Ecotricity could start constructing its turbines.

What's also a shame is how the government is looking for more oil and gas in the North Sea when it already has a huge opportunity blustering in each day: wind.

The snappily-titled British Wind Energy Association has a useful map on its website showing where the wind turbines are in the UK. Places like Cambridgeshire, Cornwall and the whole of Northern Ireland stand out as doing particularly well, but in the middle of England there's a huge empty space devoid of wind farms.

According to Ecotricity, the eight counties with no planning applications in the pipeline are:
Bedfordshire
Derbyshire
Surrey
Warwickshire
West Midlands
West Sussex
Wiltshire
Worcestershire

The energy company thinks Britain is lacking an adequate planning system, and I'd agree, given the evidence -- though of course there's no building contract in it for me.

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