The Duke of Edinburgh and David Hockney have at least one thing in common: their dislike of wind turbines.

In private remarks to a wind-turbine developer at a reception, the Duke reportedly said the giant propellers were “absolutely useless, completely reliant on subsidies and a disgrace”.

“I was surprised by his very frank views,” Mr Esbjorn Wilmar, managing director of Infinergy, told a national newspaper.

David Hockney’s view of wind turbines as “big ugly things, completely out of scale,” that “don’t work very well,” comes as no surprise.

The Bradford-born artist objected to drawing ugly models when he was a student at the Royal College of Art and has long criticised modern architecture for having no beauty. “Nobody talks about beauty and ugliness any more,” he said recently.

Hockney’s vocal opposition to wind turbines being built in the East Yorkshire Wolds, where he has spent the last seven years revitalising English landscape painting, has found an answering voice among local people. No To Wolds Wind Farms is campaigning to have the Wolds protected as an Area of Outstanding Beauty.

In West Yorkshire, such has been the sustained opposition by villagers in and around Addingham to proposals by Kelda Water Services to replace obsolete turbines with two new ones at scenic Chelker reservoir, that the company, in its most recent planning application, has reduced the proposed height of them by five metres.

The Duke’s opinion may strike some as a bit rich, given the Crown Estate’s projected multi-million pound profits from developers of offshore wind farms on property owned by the royal family.

Nevertheless, his remarks have been taken by by media commentators to further challenge the eco-orthodoxy of windfarms.

Love ’em or hate ’em, electricity-generating wind turbines have been a physical reality since James Blyth installed one to illuminate his holiday home in Marykirk, Scotland, in July, 1887.

By 1990, Denmark had some 2,500 of them. In the 1930s, they were common sights on remote farms, devices placed on prefabricated steel towers.

The first commercial wind farm in the UK was built in Cornwall in 1991 and consisted of ten turbines.

In spite of what both the Duke and David Hockney say, however, the number of turbines in the UK is scheduled to rise from about 3,421 to about 6,400 by 2020.

Wind farms are made profitable by public subsidies through Renewable Obligation Certificates. Two years ago, the cost of these certificates was reportedly more than £1 billion; it is expected to increase to £5 billion in 2020, nearly half of which will be for wind power.

The cost of these subsidies, estimated to be at least £90 per person, is added to electricity bills.

Sir David King, formerly chief scientific advisor to both Tony Blair and Gordon Brown and an advocate of alternative energy sources, has reportedly warned that these subsidies could increase fuel poverty.

Keith Thomson, the T&A’s environment correspondent, has long argued in favour of the necessity of renewable energy sources.

He said: “The key determinant in all the arguments is that we have to produce electricity without carbon if my grandchildren are to live in a world that I would recognise.

“Wind turbines are just one of a number of renewable energy technologies that tick all the boxes – they have a good return on energy invested and all that with the minimum of CO2.

“Both onshore and offshore, they can provide us with clean electricity without danger, and with wave and tidal, they will form the bulk of the provision, backed up by a base load from new fourth-generation nuclear power stations.

“There isn’t a wonderful utopian landscape for them to scar – it’s virtually all man-made, by sheep, grouse rearing and enclosures by landowners in the past. That apart, they are smooth, and elegant, and energetic much of the time and are a symbol of our technological and ethical competence.

“As far as subsidies go, the fossil fuel industries world wide have received more than £600 billion in subsidies since the war, while renewables have had less than £40 billion.

“Apart from all that, it is vital that we phase out all coal-fired power stations within ten year,s and if that means dozens of wind turbines and less climate change in the future, then that is the price we all need to pay for being responsible human beings.”

However, a cloud of thickening uncertainty hangs over the Government’s European Union-driven green agenda and the future of renewables.