EAST MIDLANDS AIRPORT

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East Midlands Airport is proposing to construct four 31.5m-high wind turbines to generate 10% of its energy. The proposal aims to make the airport carbon neutral by 2012. Officials said the turbines would be located in an area away from traffic control and at least 800m from the nearest residential properties. If the planning application is granted, Lancaster-firm Wind Direct will construct the turbines to be ready for spring next year.

EMA already uses renewable sources to produce 20% of its energy and during the past 10 years has invested more than £2m in its bid to become greener. Neil Robinson, the airport's general manager, said the wind turbines would be another "very substantial investment". He said, "We have made sure the turbines are not going to be visually intrusive and noisy to neighbours and that they are safe to operate on an airport site."

The wind turbines would be built on the west of the airport site, between its head office and DHL. They would be 31.5m tall, have 13.5m blades and a three-metre stem. The minimum distance between the turbines and the runway would be 460m. Penny Coates, managing director at East Midlands Airport, said, "The turbines will be a welcome addition to our suite of environmental measures and I hope this initiative is something which the community can feel proud of." (Source: BBC News, Sep/07)

Six Scottish windfarms were paid up to £300,000 to stop producing energy. The turbines, at a range of sites across Scotland, were stopped because the grid network could not absorb all the energy they generated. Details of the payments emerged following research by the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF). The REF said energy companies were paid £900,000 to halt the turbines for several hours between 5 and 6 April. According to the REF research, the payments made cost up to 20 times the value of the electricity that would have been generated if the turbines had kept running. The National Grid said the network had overloaded because high winds and heavy rain in Scotland overnight on 5 and 6 April produced more wind energy than it could use.

Spokesman Stewart Larque said, "One of our key roles is to balance supply and demand for energy. On the evening of the 5th into the 6th of April, the wind in Scotland was high, it was raining heavily, which also created more hydro energy than normal." Mr Larque said a transmission fault in the system meant the surplus energy could not be transferred to England and so generation had to be cut. He also confirmed that the National Grid spent £280m balancing supply and demand. A spokesman for the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC), described the incident as "unusual" and said more electrical storage was needed.

A Scottish government spokesman said electricity generated by renewables accounted for 27.4% of Scotland's electricity use. He added, "National Grid is responsible for balancing the supply of electricity from all sources across the grid to match demand and generators will sometimes be required to reduce output as part of that process. At the same time, the Scottish and UK governments have been working with the National Grid and others in the industry to strengthen grid capacity and address access constraints." (Source: BBC News, May/11)

BMI Baby is ending services to Dublin, Barcelona, Ibiza and Toulouse. Flights to Nice, Bordeaux and Knock in Ireland are being moved to Birmingham. It has also handed two of its routes from the region, Paris and Nice, to business carrier BMI. The changes mean BMI Baby will fly to 11 destinations from the region this summer, compared to 20 in 2004. Simon Evans, chief executive of the Air Transport Users Council, said, "The difficulty for people in the Nottingham catchment area now is only very recently they have been given something they wanted, cheap air travel. Now it's been taken away from them." He added carriers had always been surprised at how far people were prepared to travel to get cheap fares. A BMI spokesperson said, "Passengers flying with BMI Regional... will benefit from the same starting prices that were available through BMI Baby."

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