Peter: [00:00:00] Well, we’ve been on the dive team, we’ve seen the wind farm boats going out, and maybe I shouldn’t say, but somebody told me they’re burning 2000 gallons of diesel a day installing them. So how much energy have they used to build them, to transport them and then before they even install, well, install 2000 gallons a day. So how much are they going to do now before they start paying back?
Interviewer: [00:00:24] Yeah. And I mean, that’s a it’s a very valid point that doesn’t always come across with the campaigning in favour of green energy. It’s not like the river that’s already there. You’ve got construction…
Peter: [00:00:38] The service life of them. They’ve maybe got 25 year service life. What do you do when they reach the end of that? The Greens are all saying ‘Ah, these nuclear reactors, you can get shot of them, but one reactors probably provided enough electricity for the country for 50 years, one single wind turbine won’t have done that. And it’s left an awful mess when you’ve got to clean it up.
Interviewer: [00:00:58] I’m thinking of it in terms of diving. What sort of impact do you think that they are having on seabed?
Peter: [00:01:07] A lot to be honest. Certainly, er, the rubber ring one, they’re going to put a hundred wind farms out, a hundred wind turbines, out there. Every one’s got a hundred ton block of concrete on the seabed, in the middle of the prawn grounds. Erm. The amount of pollution coming out of the boats as well, and the disturbance that they cause and the work on the seabed, upsetting the silt and everything else, I don’t really think that it is as environmentally friendly as people think. They seem to spin in a way that it is a nice, clean power. But there’s an awful lot of damage done to get it there. So I think we’ll learn in a few years time we might go out and dive over there and there’ll probably be a nice artificial reef and there’ll be growth and everything on it. What you don’t see the prawn beds have been destroyed to get them built. And you know, the other side of it, which people don’t see. And there’s also, I mean, the visual impact of them and I don’t know. I do and I don’t like looking at them. Out at sea. Fair enough. On land, I just think…
Interviewer: [00:02:14] No, in some places, they’re very, erm, very intrusive.