The WREN Blog
This blog post aims to provide objective facts in response to frequent claims made by anti-wind campaigners.
The headline on a Western Morning News front page on 17th April 2015 read: ‘Save energy and save the countryside’ plea.
The plea came not from the Green party or Friends of the Earth, as you might imagine, but from the CPRE – the Campaign to Protect Rural England.
WREN directors Stephen Frankel and Kevin Smith attended the Cornwall Energy Island conference at the Eden Project in March 2015. The one and a half day event attracted people from around Cornwall and beyond to discuss the question: “What would it take to make Cornwall self-sufficient in energy?”
WREN was the subject of a tweet a while back, from a Richard Waters who said: ‘@wrenuk So much for saving energy - having a TV on 24/7 in your shop window is hardly "green" #practisewhatyoupreach.’ Do you know what? I don't agree.
There’s a few assumptions buried in that tweet and therefore a few reasons to dissent once you unpack those assumptions. If you take Mr Waters’ argument just a little bit further, you could say that if WREN were to undertake no activity whatsoever, it could save even more energy. But then, the people WREN has helped to install zero-cost home insulation over the last few months quite likely wouldn’t have heard about this government scheme and would still be wasting energy through their badly insulated roofs and walls. Not to mention all the others WREN has previously helped with insulation, home solar panels and biomass boilers. I reckon that a house properly insulated because someone saw the offer on WREN’s TV when they passed by would ‘pay’ for running that TV for many a night.