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Country Guardian’s objections to windfarms are based on the following.

1. Because of intermittency, the overall output from a wind turbine in the UK is only about 25% of the capacity of the turbine, and this output is unreliable.

The small yield alone is a waste of resources, but intermittency, and the resultant unreliability of wind turbines, makes them a low-grade source of energy. This is because A) they make it progressively more difficult to balance the distribution grid, and B) if the balance is to be kept, back-up generation of the installed capacity must be available from reliable sources. Most of this has to be on various levels of “tick-over”, the net result being minimal, if any, savings in fossil fuel use or emissions reduction.
The only way that this uneconomic White Elephant can be sustained is with subsidies such as the Renewables Obligation, funded by a stealth tax on electricity consumers, whatever their ability to pay.

2. Windfarms are not green.

The implications of intermittency destroy their claims in this regard, but on top of this, they are environmental disasters. The visual impact of 400 ft (125 m) white steel structures, with reflective turning blades, overturns any accepted principle for man-made structures in the countryside. On top of gross visual intrusion, wind turbines emit sound pollution and kill birds and bats. Most windfarms have been rejected in the planning process on environmental grounds, but the present government is bent on undermining the planning system

3. Windfarms are promoted with "storylines" based on unsubstantiated predictions of global warming.

Certainly the Greenhouse Effect exists, CO2 is greenhouse gas, the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has risen in the past century and some of this is probably due to CO2. So there will probably be some man-made global warming in this century, perhaps 1 to 1.5C - that is the consensus about global warming. But predictions about increases of 6 degrees or more are based on so-called “storylines ”, in which worst case scenario is piled on top of worst case scenario.

Use this Home Page to find your way around. The links in the heading give access to all main sections; the individual pages are shown in the panel on the left. The panel on the right lists the growing number of independent reports which back up our case against windfarms

The first Windfarm Action Group Conference, Organised by Saddleworth Moors Action Group in association with Country Guardian, was held at Saddleworth, Yorkshire, on June 19th 2004. It was a great success and a follow-up Conference is to be held at Saddleworth on 2nd April 2005.
Here are two reports on the 2004 Conference and information about the forthcoming 2005 Saddleworth Conference

Reduction in Carbon Dioxide Emissions: Estimating the Potential Contribution from Wind-power

David White, BSc, C Eng, FIChemE

Renewable Energy Foundation

"In conclusion, it seems reasonable to ask why wind-power is the beneficiary of such extensive support if it not only fails to achieve the CO2 reductions required, but also causes cost increases in Back-up, maintenance and transmission, while at the same time discouraging investment in clean, firm generation"

Read this damning report on this site

"Windfarm blows house value away"

A FURNESS couple have won a legal ruling proving that the value of their home has been "significantly diminished" by the construction of a windfarm nearby, because of damage to visual amenity, noise pollution and the "irritating flickering" caused by the sun going down behind the moving blades of the turbines 550 metres from the house. In so doing, the judge made what is believed to be the first ruling of its kind relating to windfarms.

The windfarm White Elephant

White Elephant: " A burdensome and costly possession, given by the kings of Siam to obnoxious courtiers in order to ruin them". OED
It is now generally accepted that windfarms are an eyesore. What is not widely recognised that are an intolerable financial burden and have little to contribute to either emissions reduction or renewable energy.

Go to The windfarm White Elephant to find out why.

windfarm noise

Noise from windfarms exists, lives have been made miserable by it, not enough research has been done on it, and the developers are in denial. This section brings together the accounts of those who have suffered, the research that is available and news about the fight back.

Climate Issues and Questions

This document is produced jointly by The George C. Marshall Institute (named after the American general who produced and implemented the "Marshall Plan" which powered the reconstruction of Europe after the Second World War), and The Scientific Alliance, a non-profit organisation based in London. A well-referenced document, it covers all aspects of climate change in a balanced, readable way, but is sceptical about the wilder predictions of some climate scientists and the Intercontinental Panel on Climate Change. Like Country Guardian, it accepts the basic science of the greenhouse effect.

"Experts show official wind power claims are hot air"

According to the Oxford Institute of Energy Studies

“Controversial plans to build thousands of wind turbines across Scotland will make almost no difference to greenhouse gas levels, according to new research by leading environmental scientists”

Read the article

Founders of the Green movement slam windfarms

James Lovelock, the founding historical and cultural leader of environmentalism and originator of the GAIA concept.
"I was asked to open the windfarm at Delabole," he said. "I think, now that I know as much as I do, I wouldn't have touched it with a barge pole". " Read more

Dr David Bellamy, botanist, environmentalist and broadcaster who has been studying windfarms for 15 years.
"My main thing against them is that they can only work, if you are very lucky,for 30 per cent of the time. Going by the ones in Denmark it is about 17 per cent of the time. Read More

Sir Martin Holdgate, now retired, was chairman of the Renewable Energy Advisory Group which in 1992 advised the Government to set out on an alternative energy path "The trouble with windfarms is that they have a huge spatial footprint for a piddling little bit of electricity," he said. "You would need 800 turbines to replace the output of a coal-fired power station” Read more`

"Windfarms - Rape of the
Countryside or Salvation
of the World?"

Yet another article which demolishes the case for windfarms.
The author, Dr Mike Hall, is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a Fellow of the Institute of Biology. He is also Honorary Manager of Burns Beck Moss Nature Reserve (an SSSI owned by Cumbria Wildlife Trust) and a member of the committee of FELLS (Friends of Eden, Lakeland & Lunesdale Scenery), a voluntary organisation founded in 2000 to help local groups protect the North West landscape from unwarranted industrial development, especially windfarms

Planning Wars

The UK Government is trying to subvert the planning process, and the spread of windfarms is only one of the results. Fighting a windfarm gives detailed advice on objecting to windfarm applications, information on windfarm Action Groups in the UK and Worldwide, and relevant documents such as John Prescott's new Planning Policy Guideline PPS22, and background on Environmental Impact Assessments.

Two heavyweight academic institutions expose the fatal defects of wind energy.

The Royal Academy of Engineering commissioned consultants to establish the costs of electricity generation for various fuels and various types of renewable. Comparing CCGT (gas) with onshore wind the cost of wind was 2.5 times the cost of gas. Offshore wind was considerably more.
Read The Costs of Generating Electricity .

TILTING AT WINDMILLS: AN ECONOMIC ANALYSIS OF WIND POWER: Professor David Simpson, The David Hume Institute.
Professor Simpson evaluates the economics of wind energy and concludes that "Wind power may have a valuable potential role in locations where grid connections are too expensive, notably in remote and sparsely populated areas, especiallyfor functions such as pumping water where intermittency is not a problem. Read the Summary at DHI Report Summary and the full report at DHI Paper

February 26 2005

The Guardian, previously a supporter of wind energy, prints a front page report headed “Report doubts future of wind power”.

Inside it prints an article by Robert Macfarlane headed:

Windfarms? You may as well take a knife to a Constable

Read on

Denmark has been held up by the windfarm developers as a model for the UK. The truth is that that the Danish experiment with wind energy has gone into reverse and is a dire warning to the UK.

Details are in The practicalities of developing renewable energy in the UK - in the light of Danish Experience - Hugh Sharman

and

Retired research scientist Dr Vic Mason has produced a devastating economic and environmental critique of wind power, fully referenced. West Danish wind power – lessons for the UK shows that wind power is a dead-end technology for UK power supplies. IMPORTANT November 2004 revised edition, with new evidence that windfarms do not save CO2 emissions

Bird and Bat strikes by wind turbines

Recently more evidence has come to light of the damage caused by wind turbine blades to birds, and also bats, which are very highly protected. This page contains links to a selection of the relevant articles

Country Guardian's Red Booklet Guide to UK Windfarms

This site contains The 2004/2005 Red Booklet Guide to UK windfarms (Tenth Edition), the only comprehensive guide to all windfarm projects in the UK, Current, Failed or Approved. The Introduction provides a statistical breakdown of the current 586 projects in all categories.

Summary of UK Windfarm Projects (2003/2004 in brackets)

	Scot- land	Eng- land	Wales IoM NI	Total
List A - current	117 (79)	54 (42)	25 (12)	196 (133)
List B - failed	32 (21)	142 (74)	68 (48)	242 (143)
List C - app'd	38 (35)	72 (73)	38 (35)	148 (143)
Total	187 (146)	268 (237)	131 (115)	586 (498)

UK windfarm News.

These web sites keep track of UK windfarm developments as well as www.countryguardian.net/
actiongrps.htm

Other Internet Sites which contain up-to-date news about UK windfarm projects - http://www.wind-farm.org/, a new site providing news and information about windfarm campaigns across the UK; http://www.savethevale.org.uk/, the web site of a campaign group fighting a project in Blackmore Vale on the borders of Dorset and Somerset; http://www.viewsofscotland.org.uk/ ,the web site of the Views of Scotland organisation which is fighting a wave of applications in Scotland; http://www.cprw.org.uk/. Fighting windfarms in Wales
For campaigns outside UK look at: www.countryguardian.net/links.htm