Contraindicators on wind power

This article later on gets into the real meat of objections to wind power. The main ones apply to onshore wind not to offshore wind generation. Downsides are: blot on the landscape, down time [requiring back up means of generation for when the wind doesn't blow], the concrete and resources needed to build and maintain the generators, and it will never be able to be a significant contributor to electricity supply. There are actually good responses possible to most of those objections but they do need to be taken seriously as objections. You might like to check out this site to get a balance -though the article does a good job of providing balancing views. A very good guide to the debate in all, is this.



One of the least convincing objections is about the killing of birds, to which note this:

'The RSPB, which supports wind power, says it objects only when there is "insufficient information about the risks to birds and their habitats to conclude that there will not be a problem". The British Wind Energy association, the industry lobby group, is perplexed. "Even in Altamont Pass in America, where 7,000 turbines were erected on a migratory route, it was only 0.2 birds per turbine per year. Compare this with the number killed by cats, cars and by flying into windows, or even by global warming, and it is not significant at all," a spokesman says.'

Which puts it into perspective.



And another sense-of-proportion-encouraging quote:

' Allan Moore, chair of the British wind energy association and head of renewables at National Wind Power... [i]n the next 10 years ... expects to invest almost £1bn in wind. Moore spent 30 years building and installing nuclear, coal, gas and other power stations before moving to wind. "Proportion is needed. In the 17th century we had 90,000 windmills in Britain. They were a part of life. What we're looking to do is install perhaps 4,000, making 5,000 in total. Roughly half will be onshore and half offshore. If 4,000 turbines sounds a lot, compare Germany, where last year alone they installed more than 2,500mW of capacity and now have 7,000 turbines."