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10. Public opinion - Beauties or beasts?
Aesthetic judgements are subjective: some people find a wind turbine beautiful and some find them ugly. That is not the issue. A wind "farm" is an industrial site of vast proportions and a turbine is a huge and noisy machine – 300 to 400 feet high or more, the height of a 30 storey office block. A 30 storey building by a leading architect might be very beautiful, but planning controls would prevent its crowning the fells of the Lake District or dominating a Scottish loch.
“Sir: It is irrelevant that **** thinks that wind turbines are beautiful. A 2 MW turbine is almost the height of Salisbury Cathedral, one of Britain’s most beautiful buildings, but planning law would prevent even such a magnificent structure from occupying almost any of the sites targeted by the wind power industry (J. R. Etherington, Independent, 7.11.02)
Buildings of architectural merit are “one offs” – the interaction of the architect’s sensibilities with the environment of the building. A wind turbine by contrast is just one of a huge number of mass-produced identical steel and plastic machines, imposed upon landscape to exploit wind availability to maximum advantage and consequently to maximum visibility. Sir Martin Holdgate, a former scientific adviser to the UK Government, put it succinctly by saying: "they have a huge spatial foot-print for a piddling bit of electricity."
Even such committed supporters as Friends of the Earth (FoE) argue that windpower should be excluded from Designated Areas like national Parks, Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Sites Of Special Scientific Interest. Jonathan Porritt, former Director of FoE, wrote in The Daily Telegraph: "The modern wind turbine is a mighty intrusive beast. It's not into nestling, blending in or any of those clichés so beloved of rural romantics."
Wind Power Monthly, the magazine for the wind industry and wind enthusiasts, has recognised that the reason for the growing unpopularity of wind power is that a heavy industry has tricked its way into unspoiled countryside in "green" disguise. The editor wrote (September 1998): "Too often the public has felt duped into envisioning fairy tale wind "parks" in the countryside. The reality has been an abrupt awakening. Wind power stations are no parks." She went on to point out that in Denmark turbines are treated within the planning process in the same way as motorways, industrial buildings, railways and pig farms!
The Public Accounts Committee (CPA 2005) has certainly recognised that there is a general feeling that these machines have no place in the countryside: - "... the likely rapid expansion of onshore wind power in the next five years could create a public reaction against renewable energy."
The CEOs of the British and European Wind Energy Associations wrote to the Independent newspaper on 8 May 2006 suggesting that wind power equivalent to 20% of UK generation could be in place by 2020. This would require at least 30,000 MW of installed wind capacity, thus 15,000 2.0 MW machines requiring 6 square miles per turbine, if we all had our fair share. No one would be more than about 2.5 miles from a c. 400 foot turbine!
Relevant articles, news items, papers, reports
The original document signed by more than 60 German academics in 1998
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The Case against Windfarms