Wind farm opponents call for European moratorium

Tue May 26, 2009 1:12pm EDT

BRUSSELS, May 26 (Reuters) - Europe should halt the construction of any more wind farms until it has further examined their impact on wildlife, landscapes and the value of nearby houses, a new anti-wind farm group said on Tuesday.

"Wind farms represent the worst-case scenario," the European Platform Against Windfarms (EPAW) said in a letter to European Union commissioners and parliamentarians, in which it called for a moratorium on all wind projects.

"EPAW considers it unacceptable that European institutions should promote the despoiling of the European landscape ... with thousands of wind farms stretching from Lapland to Gibraltar," said the pressure group, founded in October.

But wind industry officials said EPAW had failed to take account of the true danger of climate change and the slow growth of other renewable alternatives to fossil fuels.

Wind is expected to play a key role in the European Union's ambition of getting a fifth of its energy from renewable sources by 2020, up from about 7 percent today.

Huge EU-backed projects such as a North Sea supergrid, linking thousands of turbines, are also designed to bolster EU energy security by curbing its heavy dependence on gas imports from Russia.

The complaints of EPAW, an alliance of 340 local pressure groups, are not new. They say wind farms are ugly, can drive down the price of neighbouring houses and damage local ecology.

But it is the first time opponents have united at an EU level.

EPAW said the wind industry is not economical without being subsidised by the taxpayer, an assertion the European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) rejects.

"Wind energy is an intelligent investment that puts EU citizens' money to work in their own economies rather than transferring it to a handful of fuel-exporting nations," EWEA Chief Executive Christian Kjaer told Reuters recently.

(Reporting by Pete Harrison, Editing by Peter Blackburn)