February, 2010

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A step towards a vandal state

If, against all common sense and political decency, the Danish Government and Parliament force through the controversial test centre comprising seven 250 metres high wind turbines in Thy, the Danish political establishment has turned Denmark into a vandal state with totalitarian characteristics.

The wind power fever is raging all over Europe, indeed all over the world, but very rarely reflected in a project which is so grotesque, e.g. to clear 15 square kilometres of forest in a beautiful landscape to create the right wind conditions in a national test centre for wind power.

Wind power can never be “the future energy source”, though this was exactly what Vestas claimed in ceiling high posters in Copenhagen’s metro stations during COP15, followed by the appeal “Demand wind power now”. It’s a physical impossibility because wind turbines only generate electricity when it is blowing sufficiently. No wind, no electricity. Wind is a force of nature, it’s not possible to control it by hitting the on and off bottom as you please.

Experts call wind power an intermittent energy source (intermittent meaning that it stops and starts at irregular intervals). This means that wind power is a fluctuating and instable energy source. Thus, it can only be a supplementary energy source, unless the powerful wind power industry and it’s green supporters manage to change the laws of nature.

Based on the above, the plans to clear a vast area of forest in Thy to create a test centre for wind power is an absurdity. It will be crystal clear, when on Wednesday, 10 February, the Danish Minister for the Environment, Mr. Troels Lund Poulsen, attends a meeting discussing the issue with citizens in the areas which his plans are going to change into a gigantic industrial site with devastating consequences for nature and citizens.

In the strictest sense, the Minister is merely swimming with the current. From Lapland to Gibraltar, Europe is being turned into one large compact industrial site, supervised by the wind power industry. It will leave very few places for people to breathe freely, to push it to extremes. In Piteå, a municipality in the northern part of Sweden, the construction of 1100 giant wind turbines is about to become reality. The Government in Stockholm has adopted a framework goal counting approx. 6000 wind turbines inland and 3000 offshore.

This should be seen in the perspective that it takes at least 2500 wind turbines of 2 megawatt each to replace one reactor in a nuclear power plant – when it is blowing. Add to this perspective, that the CO2 emission from the Danish production of electricity has not been reduced by one single gram despite the huge stake on wind power. According to public Danish statistics, the emission was 20.7 million tons CO2 in 1990 and 21.0 million tons CO2 in 2008.

The enthusiasm for wind power is way out of proportion. In Sweden, firstly the Royal Swedish Academy’s Energy Committee and then the Engineering Class of the same academy strongly questioned the Government’s goals for wind power.

All over Europe thousands of giant wind turbines are built beyond all reason and without regard to people and in places where you would least expect it. At the same time, we witness growing protests from the people who have to live with the inconveniences of industrial wind power, sound, shadows and flashing lights. But the protests are systematically neglected by the wind power industry as well as the authorities in a way that it makes you think of totalitarian conditions. How can we allow this in 2010? It has come so far that public funds are spent on university level scientists’ studies to find ways and means to meet the opposition and on a scientific base make people accept something against their own will.

Today, hundreds of active protest groups are formed all over Europe. Some of the best organized groups formed EPAW, the European Platform against Windfarms, about 18 months ago. At the beginning, EPAW counted less than 200 groups, however, the number is now almost 400. Having in mind the importance of the Enlightenment’s French philosophers such as Voltaire, Rosseau, Diderot, and Montesquieu to the development of societies in Europe, EPAW’s president is, not surprisingly, a French chairman of a major environmental organization. On November 8 last year, a national Danish organization was founded, counting 31 member groups today.

In Thy, the Minister for the Environment is ready to clear 15 square kilometres of forest and for his test centre to include a total of 30 square kilometres of forest, meadows, dune moors, and wetlands, situated between a nature reserve and Northern Europe’s biggest breeding area for summer resident birds.

It might well be that, for a period of time, we shall need wind power as a supplement to electricity supplies but there is a limit. Maybe we need wind power for the good of everybody. But again, we need to draw a line between the end of the public good and the introduction of tyranny. In Thy, we are alarmingly near that line and perhaps about to cross it.

It is about time that responsible politicians wake up and start facing a reality where not all decisions are controlled by the wind power industry and their commercial interests. The issue of the national test centre forms a fine opportunity to use the common political sense which, after all, forms the ground for Danish democracy. It is time to think twice and avoid making hasty decisions. For the better of both the population and the wind power industry.

Government and Parliament hold the power to force through the project. In a worst case scenario, it will have profound consequences for nature and people in Thy, for no or very little use. Therefore, as the Scandinavian and Baltic spokesman of EPAW, I intend to focus particularly on the national test centre. I shall follow the development closely and report to the international community through EPAW channels.

Peter Skeel Hjorth
Spokesman for Scandinavia and the Baltic States

The Society for Wind Vigilance

January 11, 2010

Media Release

Wind Turbines Can Cause Adverse Health Effects: North American Wind Industry

Ontario -The Society for Wind Vigilance (SWV) has released its analysis of the American and Canadian Wind Energy Association sponsored report on adverse health effects from industrial wind turbines. The SWV provides scientific and unbiased information on the adverse health effects of human exposure to industrial wind turbines through a volunteer-based advocacy group of health and other professionals.

The recent report, 'An Expert Panel Review 2009, Prepared for American Wind Energy Association and Canadian Wind Energy Association' (A/CanWEA Panel Review) acknowledges that people are experiencing adverse physiological and psychological symptoms from exposure to industrial wind turbines.

The A/CanWEA Panel Review also acknowledges that wind turbine noise, including low frequency noise may cause annoyance, stress and sleep disturbance.

World Health Organization (WHO) specifically lists annoyance and sleep disturbance as adverse health effects. Health Canada recognizes that annoyance, stress and sleep disturbance lead to other adverse health effects.

One of the authors of the A/CanWEA Panel Review W. David Colby M.D. reinforced this position by stating during a recent radio interview: “We’re not denying that there are people annoyed and that maybe some of them are getting stressed out enough about being annoyed that they’re getting sick."

Another author of the Panel Review, Geoff Leventhall PhD (UK) has previously acknowledged the serious nature of low frequency noise-induced annoyance by asserting, "The claim that their 'lives have been ruined' by the noise is not an exaggeration…"

Low frequency noise and annoyance, Noise Health 2004

Dr. Arlene King, Chief Medical Officer of Health of Ontario and Dr. Ray Copes, Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion concur wind turbines may cause annoyance, stress and sleep disturbance.

Globally an increasing number of victims are reporting adverse health effects from exposure to industrial wind projects. Many families have abandoned their homes to protect their health. This cannot be denied. Yet no clinical research of victims was carried out for the A/CanWEA Panel Review.

To prevent these adverse health effects, authoritative science-based guidelines based on third party independent health studies must be developed.

Yet the A/CanWEA Panel Review inexplicably concludes by stating that it does not “advocate for funding further studies.” We note that the panel Review was produced and sponsored by the industry-created and industry-supported American and Canadian Wind Industry Associations.

Dr. Michael Nissenbaum of the Northern Maine Medical Center is one of the specialists now associated with The Society for Wind Vigilance. He states: "An objective, medical science based clearinghouse for the archiving, presentation, and analysis of health related investigations pertaining to Industrial Wind Turbines is both timely and sorely needed. These are enormous industrial machines that produce a noise qualitatively unlike anything else in our environment."

The mission of The Society for Wind Vigilance is to mitigate the risk of both physiological and psychological adverse heath effects through the advancement of independent third party research and its application to the siting of industrial wind turbines.

To view complete analysis by The Society for Wind Vigilance, consult www.windvigilance.com

“Wind Turbine Syndrome” book now available

Nina Pierpont, MD, PhD

Wind Turbine Syndrome

A Report on a Natural Experiment

(Santa Fe, NM: K-Selected Books, 2009)

294 pp. Paperback

$18 USD

Buy the book

www.windturbinesyndrome.com

THE WIND FARM SCAM by Dr. John Etherington

The spectre of global warming and the political panic surrounding it has triggered a goldrush for renewable energy sources without an open discussion of the merits and drawbacks of each.

In The Wind Farm Scam Dr Etherington argues that in the case of wind power the latter far outweigh the former. Wind turbines cannot generate enough energy to reduce global CO2 levels to a meaningful degree; what’s more wind power is by nature intermittent and cannot generate a steady output, necessitating back-up coal and gas power plants that significantly negate the saving of greenhouse gas emissions.

In addition to the inefficacy of wind power there are ecological drawbacks, including damage to habitats, wildlife and the far-from-insignificant aesthetic drawback of the assault upon natural beauty and the pristine landscape, which wind turbines entail.

Dr Etherington argues that wind power has been, and is being, excessively financed at the cost of consumers who have not been consulted, nor informed that this effective subsidy is being paid from their bills to support an industry that cannot be cost efficient or, ultimately, favour the cause it purports to support.

John Etherington - THE AUTHOR: John Etherington was a Reader in Ecology at the University of Wales, Cardiff. Since his retirement from the University in 1990, he has devoted himself to researching the implications of intermittently available renewable electricity generation, in particular wind power. He is a Thomas Huxley Medallist at the Royal College of Science and a former co-editor of the International Journal of Ecology.

Book available from 30 September 2009: www.stacey-international.co.uk

Clean Energy Splits France

It's Carbon vs. Countryside in Environmental Battle Over Plan for Windmills Near Coastal Shrine

By Edward Cody
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, October 11, 2009

MONT-SAINT-MICHEL, France -- Over the centuries, this iconic shrine on the Normandy coast has seen more than its share of battles. The latest skirmish involves not knights in shining armor, but opposing camps of environmentalists, jousting over the wisdom of installing windmill farms on nearby hillsides to turn sea breezes into clean energy.

Although played out in a medieval setting, it is a conflict of the times -- and in many ways a struggle between two good causes. On one side are those who want to reduce carbon emissions by drawing electricity out of wind. On the other stand equally dedicated ecologists who say the sight of 21st-century windmills churning above the tidal flats around Mont-Saint-Michel would detract from one of the world's most striking and best-known monuments.

"Mont-Saint-Michel represents 13 centuries of history," said Corinne Gressier, a nurse who lives in the ridge-top village of Argouges, where some of the disputed windmills would rise. "Excuse me, but if we can't prevent this site from being ruined, I don't know what to tell you."

The project has the support of local officials and President Nicolas Sarkozy's government. For these advocates of the environment, it would be a worthy contribution to France's program to expand its 2,500 windmills producing 4,500 megawatts a year to 8,500 producing 25,000 megawatts by 2020.

A push to curb climate change by slashing carbon emissions has gained ground across Europe. In December, the European Union adopted stringent goals to limit greenhouse gases. Last week, it recommended that its 27 member countries invest an additional $70 billion in clean energy over the next decade, including tripling windmill construction to produce up to 20 percent of Europe's electricity.

But the potential political impact of environmental concerns has become particularly clear in France, where Green party candidates did surprisingly well in European elections in June. Since then, Sarkozy has intensified efforts to identify his center-right government with environmental themes, seeking to lure Green voters from their natural alliance with the opposition Socialists.

The activists here have no quarrel with the quest for clean energy, but, they argue, putting windmills on the ridgeline above Mont-Saint-Michel is not the way to do it. Backed by allies around the country, they have mounted a campaign to prove that the windmills -- even at 10 miles away -- would desecrate the vista for the more than 3 million visitors who come every year to admire the rock-top monastery rising from tidewater more than 500 feet into the sky.

In some ways, the activists are tilting at windmills. Mont-Saint-Michel's mayor, Eric Vannier, has remained aloof from the struggle, more concerned about an engineering project to flush silt from the tidal flats. A letter to the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, which has listed Mont-Saint-Michel as a World Heritage Site, went unanswered. Sarkozy's ecology minister, Jean-Louis Borloo, has espoused windmills as essential to the effort to reduce carbon emissions.

Still, when about 600 people, Gressier among them, gathered below the monastery late last month to protest the plan, they gained national attention for their cause. More concretely, they pooled their money with national environmental groups and hired lawyers to sue the local government. A court ruling is expected in the spring.

"If we win, we will have saved Mont-Saint-Michel. They'll have to put everything back beyond 30 kilometers," about 18 1/2 miles, said Gressier, who runs a group named Windmills: Turbulences. "But if we lose, it's over."

In general, French law bans windmills closer than 1,500 feet from historical monuments. The case before the court in Nantes concerns plans to erect three 300-foot-high windmills on farmland in Argouges, on a green plateau a little more than 10 miles southeast of Mont-Saint-Michel.

At that distance, tourists at the monument would see only tiny blades peeking over the horizon, André Antolini, president of the industry's Renewal Energies Syndicate, told reporters last month. "Our adversaries are not serious," he added.

Mayor Louis Lemouland of Argouges agreed. In a communication to his village's 600 residents, he said the planned windmills will adhere to all government regulations, adding that the turning blades would "not have a significant visual impact on the monument" because they would "melt into the horizon."

But for Gressier and a national alliance of environmental groups, the three windmills at Argouges, if permitted, would be just the beginning. Several companies have drawn up plans for an arc of 80 towers in farming communities all along the ridgeline, they said, which would produce a horizon of whirring blades beyond the monument -- tiny at that distance, perhaps, but visible nonetheless.

Farmers and their village councils, often one and the same, tend to embrace proposals to install windmills in their fields, the groups said, because farmers get stipends for use of the land and villages get tax revenue on income from electricity, which is sold to the national grid at favorable prices by the private companies that build the windmills.

"It's a flourishing business," said Jean-Louis Butré, president of the Durable Environment Federation in Paris.

Although the fight in Argouges revolves around Mont-Saint-Michel, Butré's group has organized nationwide against Sarkozy's effort to expand the use of windmills as a way to reduce carbon emissions. The mills deface the landscape everywhere, he said, and are not an economical way to reach Europe's clean-energy goals.

France already gets nearly 80 percent of its energy from nuclear reactors, Butré explained, and draws another 12 percent from hydraulic generators. That leaves about 8 percent produced by oil, coal, natural gas, solar panels or windmills. If the government wanted to fill that gap with windmills, Butré noted, it would have to install so many that they would be part of the scenery in up to a third of the country.

Butré challenged Sarkozy's policy last year in a book titled "Fraud: Why windmills are a danger for France." Former president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, a champion of nuclear power, provided a preface in which he called windmills a false solution.

"It is a question of denouncing an unacceptable waste of public funds, a deceptive public discourse, an often questionable business," Giscard said.

He added: "It is also a question of saving the landscapes of France, our countryside and soon, our seashore, which is also threatened."

Link: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/10/10/AR2009101001901.html

Plan to put wind turbines near Mont-St-Michel condemned

Lizzy Davies in Paris
guardian.co.uk, Friday 2 October 2009 19.26 BST

From repeated attacks by English warriors to annual invasions of daytrippers, the Mont-St-Michel has faced many a threat in its history. But locals and activists claim the majestic site is now on the verge of suffering one of the worst indignities yet: a host of towering wind turbines which critics say will ruin the magnificent panorama and "massacre" the landscape of the windswept Normandy coast.

Vowing to "send a message to the [French] government" that plans to build in 11 locations near the island were unacceptable, hundreds of locals and anti-wind energy activists led a protest march last weekend.

Calling for the "devastating" plan to be abandoned, the Federation for Sustainable Development (FED) said that, although it was committed to other renewable energy forms, large-scale industrial wind power was "neither viable, nor bearable nor fair".

Protesters blame Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, arguing that his drive to boost the green energy sector has seen a rush to build windfarms in various unsuitable locations. The choice of the countryside around Mont-St-Michel, a Unesco world heritage site, has proved particularly unpopular.

A spokeswoman for one of the protesting associations told Ouest France newspaper that the planned turbines – the closest of which would be almost 10 miles from the Mont – would be "as visible as a nose in the middle of a face.

"If we allow them to be built here, why not next to chateaux in the Loire or other world-renowned sites?" she asked.

Although the anti-wind campaign appears to be gathering momentum – inspired, among others, by the 83-year-old former president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, who claims that windfarms are not only ugly, but are disruptive to bird migration – there is little chance that Sarkozy will tone down his rhetoric.

The president has said he wants national wind energy capacity to reach 25,000MW by 2020 from 3,400MW at the start of this year, a target which observers say he is highly unlikely to achieve.

His vision is nonetheless supported by most green groups, who are critical of "short-sighted" anti-wind organisations such as FED.

Mont-Saint-Michel is a rocky tidal island, just over half a mile from the coast and known for its Benedictine abbey and steepled church. The first monastic establishment was built there in the 8th century. During the revolution the abbey became a prison. The prison was closed in 1863 and the mount was declared a historic monument in 1874 and added to Unesco's world heritage site list in 1979.

Link: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/oct/02/protesters-condemn-turbine-plan-france

The official map below is the "smoking gun" of the Mont-Saint-Michel scandal

It reveals that there are two windfarm projects within the landscape protection area of the Mont-Saint-Michel, which is a world heritage site, and several more bordering with it.
It is already two too many, and we know from experience that once two are "inside", more will follow, as opponents get discouraged.

If we allow this to go through, the Taj Mahal and the Pyramids could one day be surrounded by wind turbines (or solar plants). No world heritage site will be safe.

We need to make a stand against this threat NOW. It is nothing short of state vandalism. Please help us fight this scourge!

At EPAW we are ordinary citizens, all volunteers, without financial resources, fighting against Goliath (i.e. the government - all governments in fact, because the same type of abuse is happening everywhere around the globe, with Natura 2000 and other wildlife reserves for instance).

The brown area on the above map is a zone where the landscape is supposed to be protected, to help Mont-Saint-Michel maintain its integrity as a world heritage site (in French: "aire d'influence paysagère du Mont-Saint-Michel").

Source: official map provided by the Syndicat des Energies Renouvelables to the Council of the Manche Department.

Please circulate this information. Democracy, no less, is at stake here. State vandalism cannot be tolerated.

Television, radio, and press coverage here: sos-montsaintmichel.info