[va-richmond-general] Fw: Yahoo! News Story - Wind Industry Bids to Win Over Doubters

["IE Ries" <FEATHERCHASER@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Yahoo! News - Wind Industry Bids to Win Over DoubtersI thought this might 
interest the RAS crowd since we had a speaker at a recent meeting talking about 
these and their effects on birds.
  Irene in Southside


  Wind Industry Bids to Win Over Doubters
  
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20041126/sc_nm/environment_windfarms_dc
 



       Science - Reuters 
             
               
              Wind Industry Bids to Win Over Doubters


              By Jeremy Lovell 

              LONDON (Reuters) - The European wind energy industry, thriving as 
climate change tops the global agenda, says it could eventually supply all the 
continent's electricity, but must first overcome public resistance over eyesore 
turbines. 

                     

              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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