Save Our Common Mountain Environment

In its Final Report on Renewable Energy, which forms part of its Review of Energy Policy in Wales the Assembly’s Economic Development Committee (EDC) sets about exploding what it calls ‘Myths and Legends’. It devotes a whole 6-page section to it - half the space taken to set out its response to submissions, and all its Recommendations.
No wonder. The provenance of this Committee is economic development. It shares the industry view that the role of the planning system in considering, delaying and sometimes preventing the onward march of wind turbines across the Welsh landscape is an irritant to be suffered, but ultimately to be weakened, dismembered and sidelined. Thomas a Becket and perhaps even Orwell come to mind when it recommends that the National Assembly should “as a matter of urgency, seek ways to clarify and streamline the planning process for renewable energy developments”.
It is not surprising, therefore, that after this sinister message, which echoes what the wind industry has been saying for years, the EDC turns to these various “claims that do not have much substance when viewed dispassionately against the facts”. Some of these claims are open to argument, but none are myths or legends in the sense of the derogatory and patronising tone of the Report.

Let’s look at them one by one.
"Developers of wind farms make profits from public subsidies."
There is what the EDC coyly calls “an indirect subsidy”. They must mean the fee of 3p per kWh (unit) which comes with the operators’ Renewable Obligation Certificates. For Cefn Croes alone this would amount to £4.6m for the guaranteed sales during each of its projected 25 years (58.5MW capacity x 8760 hrs @30% capacity factor x £30/MWh).
Myth number one gently implodes.

"The problems in California were caused by expensive wind energy."
Nothing to do with wind energy, says the EDC – it was in part caused by “difficulties in obtaining planning permission”. Just as well we never used this argument in CPRW.

"The intermittency of wind energy causes serious problems in supply."
This can be accommodated so long as we don’t have more than about 10% from unpredictable and intermittent sources, we are told. Probably true, but try telling that to shivering Wales if our cycle of frozen anticyclone stillness from 1947, 1963, 1981 is only just a few years delayed. Not an enormous point, but not a myth, either.

"Wind power cannot replace other power stations."
Read this carefully and you will see that this legend is “broadly true” even though the “main point” as the EDC lectures us, is that wind farms can reduce the amount of fossil fuel burned. Well, we all know that, don’t we?

"Wind power is expensive and will not become any cheaper."
Wind turbines do not repay the energy required to build them. CPRW has never held either of these views. In fact, we accept that due to the huge state investment made at the early stages its development [I’d better not call it a subsidy] the industry has been able to develop its technology world-wide in such a way that it is now a cheap source of power, competing with other conventional sources. The cost of the ROC is not passed on to the customer, because the customer has already paid for it through taxation. [Sinclair₁]
But this cheapness, comes at a price: the price of landscape.

"Wind turbines are bad for bird populations."
And so they can be. It is not just collision risk that is the problem, as insinuated here, it is disturbance to shy and rare species. Why was it, I wonder, that National Wind Power pulled out of the Mynydd Hiraethog Public Inquiry? Nothing to do with the discovery of a couple of legendary raptors so sensitive that I’m not supposed to name them, was it?

But finally, we have the really important myth.
"Wind turbines will destroy tourism in Wales."
Now, exaggerate your opponent’s point and of course he is wrong. Who said that tourism would be destroyed, effectively throughout Wales? The EDC quote “the most recent surveys” by MORI in Scotland that “nine out of ten tourists visiting some of Scotland’s top beauty spots say that the presence of wind farms makes no difference to the enjoyment of their holiday”. Of course the EDC happily quote from the sponsor’s Press Release. They probably haven’t looked at the details of the survey.

It covered tourists visiting Argyll and Bute and was first produced at a Public Inquiry in November 2002 into a wind power station proposal at An Suidhe, a hilltop overlooking the tourist Mecca of Inveraray. I was the landscape witness for the local Community Council, working with John Campbell QC. There was a simultaneous News Release from its sponsors, the Scottish Renewables Forum and the British Wind Energy Association, which claimed that 91% of visitors said the presence of wind farms made no difference to whether they would return.

But the survey covered only 307 people visiting Argyll & Bute on two weekends in late September, of whom under 20% (60) had actually seen any of the three installations. Only one - Beinn Ghlas, with relatively small turbines - could remotely be called intrusive, and then from few viewpoints, while the other two are difficult to see, being well-recessed into the remote centre of Kintyre.

It’s my business to look at wind turbines and apart from the occasional distant glimpse of one or two fragments I found only one place to see Beinn an Tuirc from 15km, and one place to see the fringe of Deucheran Hill from 10km at the end of a forestry dead end.

So 80% of interviewees had not even seen windfarms, including over 20% (62) who merely knew of their existence.

Their opinions were then prompted by being shown a location map and the answers were added to those from the original 60, who had actually seen some of these quite reclusive turbines. Hardly surprising most weren’t too bothered : I wouldn’t be (at present).

When the applicants were asked to provide that map and to explain how these other respondents had been prompted, they at once withdrew the material from the Inquiry and relied on it no further, despite the clear fact that it had been specially released to serve their purpose. They knew it would not survive cross-examination!

Nevertheless, the MORI survey is widely used to claim that 90% of tourists are not affected by windfarms. The report in Planning Magazine (1st November 2002 page 4) says “Wind farms backed in tourism survey”. Hardly any recent Environmental Statement is now complete without a similar reference.

Yet on 29th November Planning summarised the results of a very exhaustive survey by VisitScotland (the Scottish WTB equivalent) as “Study reveals tourist dislike of wind farms” noting that this contradicted the BWEA MORI survey and that the results had “forced 'Visit Scotland' to re-think its plans to promote wind farms as tourist attraction”.
An earlier and widely used Scottish Executive Survey claiming an equivocal response by residents has been withdrawn due to sampling errors pointed out by the burgeoning organisation 'Views of Scotland'.

The myth has exploded in the Committee’s face.

Geoffrey Sinclair
Spring 2003.
Reproduced by the kind consent of the author, Geoff Sinclair and the CPRW.
Geoff Sinclair is Principal of Environment Information Services and a consultant to CPRW.

[Sinclair₁] Author's Note:
However, the 2003 Energy White Paper has subsequently conceded in section 4.7 that:-
"The cost is met through higher prices to consumers."