I wish to respond to a letter published in the Picton Gazette on April 1st, written by Mark Russell of Wellington.

He was responding to a letter written the previous week by Elizabeth Dacombe entitled “Scrapping of wpd wind turbines shameful”

Mr. Russell in his comments, failed to recognize that Prince Edward Island where Elizabeth Dacombe lives, is a leading edge Provincial climate change leader, which has mastered the art of generating nearly all of its electrical energy from clean energy wind turbines, with the small remaining energy shortfall being imported by underwater cable from neighbouring New Brunswick nuclear. So when she calls it “shameful” that far away Prince Edward County scrapped an existing wind farm (approx. 98 per cent complete) she knows what she is talking about. Mr. Russell went on to claim that the actions of wpd executives should be considered criminal and they should be jailed.

In spite of this, quick as a bunny after cancelling the wpd wind farm contract and ordering it destroyed, our provincial government ponied up $141 million dollars of taxpayer money and promptly paid off the wind farm owners, all without a single kilowatt of energy being produced — and all this from a premier who has claimed to be a business man first and a politician second. It would be appreciated if Mr. Russell (who appears to know a lot about these wpd wind turbines) would explain the business case for this wpd wind farm destruction. The public has a right to know why and how such a large amount of their tax dollars was spent so promptly and also to know precisely where this money came from?

Mr. Russell made a fuzzy claim the turbines would have contributed absolutely nothing to an improved environment. Some examples of how the turbines would help the environment follow: The world is moving at breakneck speed toward the electrification of almost everything; especially in all forms of transportation and in electrically assisted forms of building heating and cooling systems combined with super insulated building envelops.

PEC gets its energy mainly from distant generating sources, so that in the event of power outages occurring from these distant energy sources, such as from severe storms, energy produced locally by the wpd wind turbines becomes extremely valuable.

The wpd wind turbines would have avoided the line losses that occur from equivalent amounts of energy received from distant energy generating sources. The “holy grail” of grid scale energy storage for solar and wind generated energy is being rapidly solved. The use of electricity to produce hydrogen is on the horizon. So there is no such thing as having too much energy available, only the lack of knowledge on how to use it wisely. There is increasing use of artificial intelligence to better manage the various sources of energy production. It is clear that the wpd wind turbine generated energy would have helped the environment in many valuable ways.

I wish to thank Elizabeth Dacombe from Prince Edward Island for her “heads up” observations and to thank Mark Russell for his article which makes it clear that we need much more public education of issues involving energy production and usage. I also wish to thank the Gazette for providing “letters to the editor” for this to occur.

Bill White

Rednersville