by Michael Smith (Veshengro)
Reacting to March 8, 2013's High Court ruling against plans to build a wind farm on farmland at Barnwell Manor in Sudborough, Northamptonshire, Friends of the Earth's Head of Campaigns Andrew Pendleton said: "It's understandable that changes to our much-loved green and pleasant land will often cause controversy, but the biggest threat by far - to people and nature - is climate change.
"It's time to stop tilting at windmills – there are some locations where turbines shouldn't be built, but if we want a clean and affordable energy future, we must find space for them in our landscape."
It might be good to check as to who paid the piper in this fight against the windmills. Don Qichote definitely was not involved.
Large turbines are not the general answer. Every building must become a power station with PVs and small wind. This has been proven in Germany in many places in that small solar and wind can produce more energy than over ten nuclear power stations, and even in Germany this is but a small amount of homes that thus far have been equipped in such a way, though more than in the UK and the USA combined.
Large wind installations in Germany also do not seem to be perceived in the same negative way as they are in Britain and one can see turbines all along the ridge of the Harz Mountains, for instance, on the line that once was the German-German border. They stretch as far as the eye can see but in nicely spaced intervals and thus do not become a blot on the landscape.
Small wind and roofs with PVs should become the norm rather than the exception everywhere making every building a power generating plant regardless as to whether it is a modern house or office building or a listed building.
It must become a rarity to see a building that does not have power generating arrays on them rather than the opposite, as it is now. Only in that way can we transition to a carbon free future and have energy security.
© 2013
