The European Wind Energy Association (EWEA), which held its
annual meeting in London this week, projected that offshore "wind
farms" covering an area the size of Greece could meet Europe's
electricity needs with no greenhouse gas emissions.
But skeptics cite pollution of another kind with giant wind
turbines scarring the landscape, or blighting the sea horizon,
deterring tourists and killing birds with their whirling vanes.
"The argument is reaching ridiculous proportions. Most people
don't understand climate change and they don't understand wind
turbines," Alison Hill of the British Wind Energy Association (BWEA)
told an international meeting in London.
She said her organization was mounting a major publicity campaign
in newspapers, with billboard posters and a photographic exhibition
extolling what she called the beauty of turbines to inform and win
over people.
"It is a long standing case of Not In My Back Yard. Where people
have knowledge they give support. In this case familiarity breeds
content," she said.
With the Kyoto treaty on cutting carbon dioxide emissions about
to come into force, signatory governments must seek clean and
renewable sources of energy.
Wind farms are sprouting in fields, on hilltops and out of the
seas around Europe with major projects either under construction or
in planning.
The EWEA says it can hit the target of generating 75 gigawatts
(GW) of electricity -- or 5.5 percent of demand -- by 2010, of which
10 GW could be offshore.
With initiative and government intervention to remove long term
support for the CO2 emitting fossil fuel power industry, this could
rise to 12 percent by 2020.
"In the longer term, a sea area of 150,000 square kilometers ...
could provide enough power to satisfy all of Europe's electricity
demand," an EWEA statement said. He gave no timeframe.
But Rowena Langston of the Royal Society for the Protection of
Birds -- which says global warming must be stopped -- said
development was being pushed ahead with scant reference to the
impact on the local environment and in particular bird life.
"Until there is more robust information, we are not going to
overstep our conservation brief and say a project should go ahead
regardless," she told the meeting.
But renewabale energy specialist Bryony Worthington of pressure
group Friends of the Earth (news
- web
sites) countered that the climate crisis was now so grave that
birds had to take second place to saving the planet.
"The bottom line is that climate change is happening, endangering
us all. It is extremely scary," she told Reuters.
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