Centrica Announces New Wind Farm, While NIMBYs Block A Whole Lot More

More baby steps towards those rather daunting UK emissions targets: Centrica, the energy provider, has announced plans to build another off-shore wind farm just down the road from its existing one off the coast of Lincolnshire. It’ll have 75 turbines and provide electricity for 200,000 homes.

Perhaps equally as encouraging as the carbon-minimising farm itself is the fact that Centrica have also done a deal with private equity firm TCW to sell off 50% of two of its existing wind farms. Good news for Centrica, who now have an extra £50m to play with, but good news for the renewable energy industry, as its clear that investors regard it as a stable growth area. Private equity legend Guy Hands is also throwing his weight around trying to take control of AIM-listed Novera Energy. 

More good wind news as well in the Guardian today, with Vestas announcing that they’ve invented a turbine blade that doesn’t interfere with radar. Aviation concerns are a major inhibitor of wind turbine development – they can appear as aircraft on radar, cluttering up the place and confusing those who are having to work out what is actually a plane (well, it’s the ones that are moving, but I can see how annoying it could get). These new blades will hopefully clear the red tape surrounding a lot of potential wind farm developments.

What isn’t becoming easier is persuading the British public that this is the way forward. This week has seen a rash of NIMBY activity, blocking wind developments in Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, the East Riding, and Northumberland. While it’s understandable that people don’t want to live right next to a turbine, and their beauty or ugliness undeniably a deeply subjective perception, these are communities as small as nine houses. And the essential NIMBY argument made by one person this week, that “the damage they do to the local area and its people greatly outweighs the tiny contribution they might make to the country’s renewable energy needs” is totally flawed – it’s like saying there’s no point voting because one vote won’t make a difference. It needs a collective effort. Switching to wind power is the best chance of reducing carbon output over the short to medium term, and so ”the effect that such a scheme would have on the rare breeds programme at Linton Zoo”, as one campaign group is worried about, might just pale in significance next to a rise in global temperature.

Post-Copenhagen, we’re likely to see a lot of this kind of argument – that it’s pointless doing anything in the face of India and China raising their emissions (which is going to happen no matter what agreements are made). It’s defeatist logic that will lead to defeat. A momentum is building behind wind power, from private equity firms to government subsidies to technological innovation, and it’s pointless and damaging to try and push against it now. And the UK, densely populated though it is, needs to be part of the effort.

Photo: ChaunceyDavis818

Posted by Ben Beaumont-Thomas in Green Rush | October 29, 2009 1:32PM |