By Jeffrey Titford MEP (UK Independence Party)

17-03-2006

Under pressure from ambitious targets for reducing carbon emissions set by the Kyoto Protocol, and increases in the use of renewable energy dictated by the European Commission, the Government has put its weight behind wind turbine technology and is forging ahead with what it sees as a quick fix solution. Unfortunately, the more you examine the rationale behind it, the less practical wind technology seems to be.

For instance, did you know that there are 1,628,000 homes in the UK with pitched roofs and no insulation? Each one of these houses loses 3780 kWh of energy every year. Insulating them to standards laid out in the 1990 building regulations would save 3375 kWh per annum.
The annual output of a 750 kW wind turbine is 1.64m units. Insulating 485 houses would save this amount of energy every year.
The sums get worse. The annual subsidy of such a turbine is £32,850 while the average cost of insulating a house is a one-off £122, say £60,000 for 485 houses.

Over the 100 year life of the houses, the energy saving cost averages out at £600 per annum. This makes saving energy by insulation 55 times more cost-effective than saving it by installing wind turbines.
Of the many environmental problems associated with wind turbines, the most common complaint is the decimation of the bird population - and the sheer scale is very disturbing. A study in Spain in 2002 revealed that 11,200 birds of prey, 350,000 bats and 3 million small birds are killed each year by wind turbines.

Even the manufacturing of wind turbines is damaging to the environment because most are made from aluminium. Aluminium is made from bauxite, which is extracted by surface mining, an operation which scars the landscape and requires huge amounts of energy. There are also serious issues in regard to the emissions from aluminium smelting and, world-wide, the aluminium smelting industry uses as much electricity as the continent of Africa!


The noise from the turbines is also a considerable problem. The majority of it is created by the ‘thump’ noise of the blades each time they pass the tower. This continual noise creates anxiety and nausea in people living nearby. Even at 3,000 feet away, the noise is still significant.

What about the impact of the construction of a wind turbine? It is a major undertaking, typically taking 1 to 2 years. Sites often require new roads, electricity distribution stations and even new cement works as at Cefn Croes in Wales. Each tower may need as much as 1,250 tonnes of concrete. Foundation pillars are sunk to over 100 feet. Unfortunately, the majority of decommissioning plans for wind farms in the UK do not even cover removal of these foundations as they are considered to be harmless leftovers!

A common complaint from the neighbours of wind farms is about the stroboscopic effect caused by the sun passing behind the rotor blades (stroboscopic effects are a recognised trigger for epilepsy). A survey conducted by Plymouth GP, Dr Amanda Harry found that the people questioned cited this light effect as a cause of headaches, migraines, nausea, vertigo and disorientation. This effect occurs at considerable distances and, interestingly, it is not only obtained by direct vision of the blades but also from the shadow flicker caused by the blades in the light.

Less widely known is the problem of flying ice in the Winter. Ice forms on the turbine blades and in some instances to thicknesses of 150 mm. When temperatures rise, large fragments of ice have been flung up to 550 metres and land with impacts of up to 170 mph. In the headlong rush to meet its targets, to avoid penalties for non-compliance, the Government is ignoring many of these very serious issues.

Wind technology should be a part of the UK’s energy mix but we have to get the balance right and factor in the negatives, not simply ignore them. It cannot produce consistent power in the amounts needed to make a major contribution toward our overall energy needs, unless we build many thousands of them all over the UK and, in the process, despoil large areas of our most picturesque countryside, with equally dramatic effects on the lives of people who live nearby.

Based on independent research commissioned by Jeffrey Titford MEP and carried out by Professional Solutions and Services Ltd.