GETTING THE WIND UP

As we reported earlier this year, when Wychavon District Council met to consider plans for a windfarm at Lenchwick in Worcestershire, all bar one of the councillors voted against.

The one who was happy to approve the plans was familiar with windfarms. The others were not. They even considered their visit to an operational windfarm as irrelevant when it came to weighing up the merits of the Lenchwick proposals. Apparently, a successful, soon to be expanded windfarm of ten 100-metre turbines could not be compared with a potential windfarm of just five 125-metre turbines. Five wind turbines would have a much bigger impact than ten, obviously. It was, quite simply, not comparing like with like.

Those councillors who had read the nimby literature with which the protesters of VVASP had saturation bombed them lined up to reel off all the usual myths. There was the all-too familiar competition to see who could make the most rabid and implausible claims about windfarms. It seems likely that the councillors had decided beforehand who would lead on what piece of nonsense - "You do the silly one about people in Cornwall having to move to the Midlands to escape the horror of the turbines; I'll do the old phoney one about subsidies". That way, each councillor could deliver his or her own example of nimby doublethink and there would be no unseemly repetition.

One of the falsehoods spewed out by a councillor who should have known better was the hoary old yarn about Denmark.

Denmark, of course, has been a world leader in the development of wind energy. So nimbies in the UK and elsewhere are forever trying to make out that Denmark has failed. The result is the strange assumption that the Danes have somehow or other given up on wind power.

Some have been keen to quote Aase Madsen, Chair of Energy in the Danish Parliament, who branded windpower a "terribly expensive disaster". The problem there is that Madsen, who represented the far-right Dansk Folkeparti, left Danish politics in 2005.

A more up-to-date source would be the new Prime Minister of Denmark, Helle Thorning-Schmidt. In October of this year (2011), Thorning-Schmidt announced that wind power would provide 50% of Denmark's electricity by 2020.

Fifty per cent is a lot. The European Commission envisages nearly 50% (actually, 49%) of Europe's electricity coming from wind power by 2050: wind will be the "biggest source of electricity in the bloc by 2050, outstripping both coal and nuclear power." Denmark will be way ahead of the game, though, anticipating a fossil fuel-free electricity generating system by then.

By the end of last year, Denmark's 3,752 megawatt installed capacity meant that wind power was meeting 25% of Denmark's electricity needs. That, it would seem, is set to double over the remainder of this decade. As the Danish Wind Industry Association was proud to announce, "The ambitious targets place Denmark in pole position on renewables among the developed countries".

In 2005 - the year in which the right-winger Aase Madsen left Danish politics - Denmark was sourcing 17.9% of its electricity from wind power (at that time, no other European country had broken the 10% barrier for wind energy). So, somehow or other, during a time when (if the nimbies were to be believed) the Danish people were donning sackcloth and lamenting their poor choice of renewable energy - a "terribly expensive disaster" - the Danes actually managed to increase their wind energy output significantly and are committed to raising it enormously.

Quelle surprise!! While English nimbies (and the councillors who represent them) were kidding themselves and each other that Denmark was a glaring example of a country which tried windpower and didn't like it, the Danes have kept on going for more and more windpower.

When you think that important planning decisions in the UK have been based an a total misunderstanding of how another country is dealing with the issue, you do have to ask yourself some deep and searching questions. Like: how can a council member on a planning committee be so wrong? Where the hell did he get his "facts" about Denmark's supposedly embarrrassing windpower misadventure, and why did he not bother to look into this before confidently misleading the rest of the room? And is such an individual the sort of person who really should be entrusted with important decisions, when he can't tell the difference between a nimby lie and a European wind energy success story?

Could it be that the false "facts" about Danish windpower came - like so much other nonsense - from the anti-wind crazies, the deliquents of VVASP, who exercised mob-rule over their own communities and imposed a blanket ban on the real facts so that only their laughable false facts were heard?

Probably.

And this is just one example of a fake, inaccurate, made-up and demonstrably untrue "fact" being used to justify opposition to a very sensible, desirable and necessary development.

Let's be clear. The real facts are that Denmark remains a world leader in renewable energy, and in windpower in particular, and the notion that the Danes had a change of heart about windpower is just yer typical nimby lie. The Danes are way ahead of us now and they will be for the foreseeable.

Whether or not the nimby nutters and the councillors who strive so hard to please them will accept the facts or keep regurgitating their own gibberish remains to be seen.