Offshore wind power - Saviour or sinner?
The
Government says offshore wind power is crucial to stopping global
warming. Others warn that the thousands of windmills appearing in
British waters will cause more problems than they solve. Is wind power
an environmental saviour, or sinner?
Early on the morning of 28 May, fifteen boats of
angry fishermen descended on a single survey platform off the south
Lincolnshire coast. As the boats circled, their horns blared out a
strident protest at the offshore wind farm the platform’s crew
were preparing to build in the fertile seas of The Wash. It may have
seemed like an unlikely scene, but protest organiser Andy Roper had
no doubts about why he was there.
“Fishermen will be bankrupted,” if the
project goes ahead, he says. Once the turbines are in place, he says
they will “will squeeze fishermen out of areas they have traditionally
fished,” reducing catches and ruining their livelihoods.
The 1000 massive wind turbines planned for The Wash,
each the size of the London Eye, don’t just have fishermen worried.
The shipping industry says these wind farms, some of which will be
up to two-thirds the size of the Isle of Wight, would block busy shipping
routes, damaging trade from Britain's ports and making it only be
a matter of time before a tanker runs into one.
English Nature and the Royal Society for the Protection
of Birds (RSPB) are worried that the cumulative effect of wind farms
spread all over the British coastline will harm rare sea birds, further
reducing already dwindling populations.
Nevertheless, the Government is continuing its unprecedented
expansion of offshore wind farms – a move that will change the
British coastline dramatically over the coming decade.
Tackling climate change
The Prime Minister has described climate change as, “the single
most important long-term issue that we face as a global community,”
and has made tackling it central to Government policy. In February
2003, the Government’s Energy White Paper set ambitious targets
for reducing the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions, planning cuts
of up to 60 per cent by 2050. A major part of this reduction will
come from replacing fossil fuel burning power stations with renewable
sources of energy such as wind, solar, tidal and wave power. The Government
says 10 per cent of our electricity should come from renewable sources
by 2010, and double that amount by 2020.
While there are many sources of renewable energy
available, wind power is currently the only technology sufficiently
well-established to be viable on the massive scale required. Over
1000 turbines already dot the hills and dales of the British countryside,
generating enough power for some 400,000 homes. The cost of wind-generated
electricity is falling fast and numerous private companies are queuing
up to exploit the infinite potential of our windswept land.
Meeting the government’s targets would eventually
require more than a tenfold increase in the current generating capacity
of wind power. However, ten times as many windmills spread across
the British countryside is not something that seems practical given
that wind farms are facing growing opposition from people who say
they are already despoiling areas of great natural beauty.
The Government’s answer to this problem is
to place the majority of future wind farms offshore. Wind farms a
few kilometres off the coast, it says, will not provoke the “not
in my back yard” attitudes that have been hampering developments
inland. The coast also has Britain’s largest and most consistent
wind resources - by far the best in Europe.
The
Government identified three areas where wind farms will be concentrated
over the next decade. Liverpool Bay and the Northwest, The Greater
Wash (off the coast of Norfolk and Lincolnshire) and the Thames Estuary
have been selected for their good wind resources, shallow water and
easy access to the National Grid. Private companies will build the
wind farms on areas of sea bed leased from the Crown Estate, but the
Government oversees all development, only giving final consent for
construction once an environmental impact assessment is completed.
So far, 12 wind farms, providing enough power for
around 600,000 homes, have the go-ahead for construction. A second
round of even larger wind farms that could potentially supply four
million households should begin construction in the next few years.
Developers say the potential for clean, carbon-free power generation
is immense. However, every day it seems more controversy grows up
around these plans.
Showdown on the high seas.
British fishermen are no strangers to economic hardship. In the last
few decades, dwindling fish stocks and EU quotas have considerably
reduced the size of the British fishing fleet and made economic survival
a daily struggle for those who remain in business. Many fishermen
think the large areas of Britain’s coastal waters now being
given over to offshore wind farms, some of which occupy up to 70 square
miles, are the final straw.
“Every time an area is developed and the pylons
go into an array, there are several vessels that cannot fish,”
says fisherman Andy Roper. He says most areas given over to wind turbines
will be permanently off limits to fishing boats and the subsequent
loss of income could put many crews out of business.
The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) says turbines
will be sufficiently well-spaced for most boats to keep fishing, but
Mr Roper says that even if boats are able to sail between the turbines,
it wouldn’t make a difference. “It’s very dangerous
to fish in that situation. If things go wrong when you are trying
to work in amongst the turbines, it’s going to be life threatening.”
Fishermen also fear that wind farms could harm to
ecology of otherwise fertile fishing grounds. “These things
give off a lot of acoustic vibrations; you’ve got the electromotive
flux that comes off the cables;” Mr Roper says both of these
things could drive away fish. Research conducted for the Crown Estate
also showed that shockwaves created during construction of wind farms
could harm fish and marine mammals. Mr Roper fears this could kill
the spawn of important commercial species that breed in The Wash,
such as lemon sole. These factors could have “a knock on effect
on every other species – on the bird life, on mammals,”
that could change the whole ecology of the sea, he says. He denounced
the developer’s ongoing study into marine life in the area as
a “sham”, since it did not begin until after the government
had given the developer consent to begin construction.
Yet, supporters of the wind industry argue that wind
farms could benefit marine life. “You might find that offshore
wind farms provide a haven – the artificial reef effect –
which allows more fish,” says Gordon Edge, head of offshore
development for the BWEA. “Whilst they may not be able to fish
in a particular area, fishermen may find there are more fish in the
general locality.” The Crown Estate is funding research into
the effect of wind farms on sea life, but there is currently no conclusive
proof as to whether wind farms will be of harm or benefit.
Centrica, the energy company developing the two wind
farms at the centre of the May protests, insists its sites were selected
with the interests of fishermen and the environment in mind. Spokesman
Neville Barltrop says, “there is a tremendous amount of time
and investment going into the survey work on fish stocks, seabed communities,
bird life.” Environmental surveys on the site have only recently
started, but Mr Barltrop says construction is still a year away, giving
Centrica enough time to fulfil its obligations and properly assess
the impact of the development. Mr Barltrop says there will inevitably
be some disruption to the fisheries, but that all fishermen have been
offered compensation payments. “Some fishermen have turned them
down, others have accepted,” he says.
The fishermen of the Wash are not alone in their
protests. Oyster fishermen based in Whitstable have protested that
the construction of the Kentish Flats wind farm could harm the famous
local oysters. Swansea fishermen said the Scarweather Sands development
would exclude them from 2500 acres of fishing ground. While most of
these cases will most likely result in compensation, few fishermen
are happy with such a compromise. Many of them feel that this whole
situation could have been avoided if the government had consulted
them properly at an earlier stage.
“This policy has been singularly ill-considered
and poorly implemented,” says Doug Beveredge of the National
Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations. “There could
have been, at the outset, an opportunity for us to co-exist as successfully
as we can with offshore wind. But we’re really being faced with
a fait accompli as regards the location and the turbine patterns of
these farms.
“Other [EU] member states, most notably the
Netherlands and Denmark have gone down the route of identifying fishery-sensitive
areas and saying these areas are not suitable for the development
of offshore wind. Whereas the UK government has gone ahead and said
to wind farm developers, tell us where you want to go and we’ll
see what we can do.”
Mr Roper says there are plenty of places they could
put wind farms in the Wash without getting in the way of fishermen,
but they were simply not consulted. “Why didn’t they pick
areas of ground that have already been impacted, areas of ground that
have been dredged and the ground has been impoverished?” Instead,
he says they have put many wind farms “right in the middle of
a valuable piece of fishing ground.”
The DTI says it has consulted all parties before
giving the go ahead for any wind farm. It has also recently set up
a liaison group to promote better communication between developers
and the fishing industry. Most of the wind farms proposed for the
Wash do not yet have consent to begin construction and the wind industry
says it will address all fishermen’s concerns. “If objections
are of great merit, then the project won’t happen.” says
Mr Edge.
Nevertheless, Mr Beveredge feels there has been a
“stampede” toward offshore wind that will be difficult
to reverse. “The problem we find now is that developers have
made so much commitment to an identified site. You can understand
their reluctance to go back and revisit certain issues, but that is
the only solution we can see right now.” Otherwise, he says,
“there’s no question that the most vulnerable vessel operators
will go out of business.”
Centrica insists that fishermen have to look at the
wider picture. “The bottom line is really the environmental
benefit,” says Mr Barltrop, “For the fishermen themselves,
addressing climate change is extremely important. It could potentially
threaten their livelihoods.”
However, Mr Roper still sees wind farms as the more
urgent threat to his livelihood and plans to keep protesting. “You’ve
seen phase one,” he says. “Wait for phase two. Fishermen
can’t just disappear. They need those grounds.”
A disaster waiting to happen?
While
fishermen fear damage to their livelihoods, leading figures in the
shipping industry have warned that the expansion of offshore wind
could have a serious impact on the British economy as a whole. Ninety-five
per cent of our trade moves by sea. The UK’s ports and shipping
lanes are the conduit for this commerce, but the shipping industry
says many offshore wind farms will pose a serious danger to vessels
bearing the raw materials and manufactured goods that keep the British
economy ticking over.
Most wind farms, some up to two-thirds the size of
the Isle of Wight, will sit in the approach routes to three of the
UK’s major ports – the Humber, the Thames and Liverpool.
The entrances to these ports are already narrow and congested with
traffic. Rear Admiral Jeremy de Halpert, executive chairman of Trinity
House, the official body that oversees maritime safety, says these
wind farms will simply be too close to shipping lanes for comfort.
“We have a lot of ships with manoeuvrability problems operating
in the same area of water as the developers want to put wind farms.”
He says they will compromise “very narrow channels of safe navigation”
and would interfere with vital radar systems. “There is a great
risk of having a disaster,” he says.
In some cases, wind farms may actually block the
entrance to these ports. Steve Cuthbert, chairman of the UK Major
Ports Group says a 300-turbine wind farm proposed for the Thames Estuary,
called the London Array, “actually blocks one of the three access
channels into the Thames – it goes right across the mouth of
Fisherman’s Gat.” Admiral de Halpert says National Wind
Power’s 70 square-mile development at Triton Knoll in The Wash
would sit “right bang in the middle of the M1 between the Humber
and Europe”, an important route for British car exports.
“You are asking thousands of ships to divert
about 30 miles because of the placing of that wind farm,” he
says. It would increase sailing time by up to two hours and “add
considerably to the cost” of shipping, he says.
But wind farm developers say the shipping industry
has overblown the risk. “Wind farms are no more of a danger
to shipping than any other offshore installation,” says Gordon
Edge. “Nothing goes through the actual site of the London Array,”
but if ships were to drift into the wind farm, he says the turbines
would be 300 to 500 metres apart and they would be unlikely to hit
anything. “You’d probably run aground before you’d
do that,” he says, since almost all wind farms are built on
sand banks in shallow water. “You are looking at an installation
that gives you warning that that’s where you shouldn’t
be – something that might enhance safety to a certain extent.”
Rear Admiral de Halpert acknowledges that the turbines
of the London Array would not intrude on the shipping lane, but he
says the 1000-yard safety exclusion zone around it would still “cut
in half the main road into the Thames Estuary”.
The shipping industry says most of the current problems
could have been avoided, but the Government and the wind industry
have mishandled the whole planning process. Mr Cuthbert believes that
most of the current problems were caused by “inappropriate consultation
in the early stages” and that “the whole area of safety
of navigation was omitted right from the very beginning.” Rear
Admiral de Halpert says there are “miles and miles of empty
space” in the Wash through which very little shipping passes,
he wonders “why don’t they build one there instead of
sticking it right in the middle of the busiest shipping lane in the
North Sea?”
A Commons Transport Select Committee inquiry in April
2004 reached similar conclusions. Its report said many planned offshore
wind farms would pose a significant threat to shipping. It concluded
that the government had implemented a policy that “ignores the
basic interests of the shipping industry” and made a future
collision with a wind farm “inevitable”.
The DTI has not commented on this report, but insists
that it takes maritime safety seriously and says it will consult closely
with the Department for Transport and the Maritime and Coastguard
Agency about the safety of all future developments . “Consents
won’t be granted for wind farms which pose a danger to navigation,”
says DTI spokeswoman Eurwen Thomas. However, Mr Cuthbert says he still
has no commitment from ministers that they will change the way it
plans these developments.
Rear Admiral de Halpert believes these problems will
eventually be resolved and there is more than enough room for everybody
in the sea. “We are not in ‘Not in my back yard’
mode. We are saying ‘Welcome to my back yard – it’s
vast’. But having said that, there are some areas that some
ships can only go and there are some areas that only fishermen want
to go. What we need to do is get everybody playing in this backyard
to sit down and work out the best harmony.”
Ruffled feathers
Of
course, humans aren’t the only users of the sea and many conservationists
are concerned about wind farms’ impact on the large numbers
of birds that live off the British coast. The RSPB and English Nature,
the government agency in charge of wildlife and conservation, fear
that wind farms located in important sea bird habitats or migratory
routes could have a negative effect on already dwindling populations.
They say construction and maintenance of the several thousand wind
turbines planned could scare away the birds; once operational, they
say the wind farms could deny access to important feeding grounds
and cause thousands of bird deaths each year from collisions with
the turbine.
The current focus of the RSPB’s concern is
the development of a 90-turbine wind farm at Shell Flats, off the
coast of Blackpool. The project would sit on top of a large population
of common scoter, a small black sea duck whose population is in rapid
decline. RSPB officer Daniel Pullan says the scoter is easily disturbed
and, “maintenance that would have to take place throughout the
year would seriously disrupt the scoters’ feeding.” He
is also worried that the farm could act as a barrier for the birds,
forcing them to divert their usual flight patterns and spend more
time in the air. “This can have implications for their energy
level and could lead to increased mortality,” he says. The RSPB
is still in discussions with the developer to see if it would be possible
to mitigate the farm’s impact, but Mr Pullan sees little alternative
but to relocate it.
In June 2004, English Nature also blocked the development
of a wind farm off Teeside. It says the project would have a significant
negative impact on a Special Protected Area for birds from Greenland
and Canada that winter in British waters. English Nature spokeswoman
Heather Duncan says, “there hasn’t been enough study yet
to see how it will actually affect bird habitats” and the onus
in on the developer to “satisfy us that there won’t be
a detrimental effect.”
The BWEA says the danger posed by wind farms is insignificant
compared to the millions of birds killed in collision with power lines
and cars, or eaten by cats every year. It says the wind farm in Blyth
Harbour, Northumberland, which has a large bird population, kills
only one or two birds each year per turbine. However, conservationists
say the cumulative impact of this can be significant where there are
large numbers of turbines. The Blyth wind farm has only nine turbines.
The RSPB cites a 7000-turbine onshore wind farm in the Altamont pass
in Northern California that kills over 5000 birds every year, including
endangered species such as golden eagles.
Overcoming this problem could prove quite a challenge
for the wind industry. Just how a wind farm like Shell Flats could
be planned on top of a large population of rare birds is indicative
of the lack of knowledge about Britain’s coastal habitats and
the effect that wind farms could have on them. In many cases, wind
farm developers’ environmental assessments have been the first
extensive wildlife studies performed in these areas.
“The problem with Shell Flats is that nobody
knew, until the developers went out and looked, that there were these
black scoters on the site,” says Gordon Edge, head of offshore
development for the BWEA. Mr Pullan says it is still largely “pot
luck” if a developer picks a site that turns out to be an important
habitat for birds.
Hard scientific information on the impact operational
offshore wind farms have on birds is also very limited. The most comprehensive
study so far was at the Danish development of Tuno Knob – a
10-turbine project that sits in a wintering ground used by around
6000 sea ducks. A one-year study found the development had no detectable
impact on their feeding or roosting and minimal risk of collision.
However, most experts say it is simply too early to tell what the
long-term consequences may be. “To judge the effect on sea bird
populations, at the very least we need to see them go through a complete
set of seasons,” says Ms Duncan. “We don’t have
that yet.”
Unfortunately, such scientific uncertainties do not
fit with the Government’s plans for a rapid expansion of offshore
wind power. “The timescale that the developers are pushing to
follow is not nature’s timescale,” says Ms Duncan. She
says the current rate of development is, “outstripping the rate
at which we can collect the information we need.”
Andy Clemens, head of protected areas for English
Nature, says he, “doesn’t necessarily think the pace of
wind farm development should slow, but what we do want is that the
pace of knowledge about the impacts on wildlife catches up with the
pace of development. Now is the time for the Government to be funding
the kind of surveys we need to assess the developments up front.”
The Government says it is already responding to the
issues raised by English Nature and the RSPB. DTI spokeswoman Eurwen
Thomas says, “steps were taken prior to round two to further
reduce any risks to birds by excluding areas of the sea extending
up to 13 km from the coast,” where birds tend to gather. She
says developers are also required to include two winter season’s
worth of bird data in their environmental impact assessment and are
taking care to minimise disturbance during sensitive times, such as
when birds are breeding.
Nevertheless, the RSPB and English Nature are still
worried about almost all future developments, every one of which English
Nature identifies as being in areas of possible international importance
for birds. “There is still potential for conflict,” says
Mr Pullan, who has not ruled out further action to block future wind
farms that may threaten birds. “It’s a case of wait and
see from our perspective.”
But Gordon Edge claims this approach could damage
the development of the wind industry. “What the RSPB is saying
is that all these projects could potentially have a problem, but from
our point of view that’s not very useful,” he says. Until
the RSPB or English Nature is able to name specific areas it thinks
wind farm developers should avoid, he says the industry will effectively
be left in “limbo”, unsure whether to expect late-stage
objections that could block a development in which they have invested
heavily. He is concerned that this situation may cause costly delays
that could damage the fledgling wind industry.
An uncertain future
Just
one and a half years after its bold announcement for a radical expansion
of wind power, the Government now finds itself very much on the back
foot. Offshore wind’s critics claim the Government rushed through
the environmental assessments without adequately consulting those
groups who are protesting most vocally now. The Commons Transport
Select Committee concluded that the government had “woefully
mishandled” the whole process, resulting in sites unsuitable
for wind farms reaching a late stage in planning.
The DTI has been tight-lipped about the criticisms,
but Gordon Edge says the Commons Committee was “overly harsh”.
He does acknowledge that the Government needs to “get its act
together” and make some changes. “Clearly we would like
to see a more inclusive process earlier on so people don’t feel
so aggrieved. It could have been done better, but then again no one
has done this before. This is very early stage development for offshore
wind and it’s clear things aren’t going to be done perfectly
first time. Everyone is learning by doing.”
Some parties remain wholly sceptical about offshore
wind farms. Fisherman Andy Roper says the environmental benefits of
wind farms will never outweigh the loss of fishing grounds, their
impact on sea life and the risk to shipping. “These wind farms
are a complete and utter white elephant, and the Government knows
it,” he says.
Yet, wind power also has many influential supporters
who argue that the problems so far need to be looked at in a wider
context. Greenpeace says that while a wind farm’s impact on
the environment is an important issue, we should not forget the urgency
of dealing with climate change. “The importance of tackling
our carbon dioxide emissions has to be very much at the forefront
of every decision,” says Robin Oakley, Greenpeace climate change
campaigner. “The overall goal should be to get a very large
capacity of offshore wind built…as quickly as possible.”
The Royal Society, the UK’s national science academy, is also
a strong supporter of wind power. Its main concern is that the Government
is not working fast enough meet its renewable energy targets.
Progress has certainly been slow. North Hoyle is
still the only large-scale wind farm generating in British waters
– at North Hoyle. A DTI review of renewable energy generating
capacity in February 2004 found it was providing only 1.8 per cent
of the UK’s energy demand, when it should have already exceeded
3 per cent. The report said it could only meet the 2010 target if
“barriers to wind’s deployment can be eliminated”,
not something that seems likely right now. The majority of the other
first-round developments will go ahead, eventually providing some
600,000 homes with power, but the protests of fishermen, the shipping
industry and conservationists surrounding the second, much larger
round of wind farms may be difficult to disperse.
Nevertheless, the DTI insists it is still firmly
committed to wind power. “The 2010 target is challenging but
achievable,” says Eurwen Thomas, “and we expect 7-8 per
cent of the target to come from wind.” She is confident that
most problems can be resolved in the next few years.
The BWEA also does not believe the current protests
against offshore developments are insurmountable. In all kinds of
big projects, says Mr Edge, developers go through planning permission
and invest heavily, only to be refused due to unforeseen circumstances.
“Maybe the stakes are higher offshore,” he says, “but
so are the rewards. It’s a challenge, but we’re blazing
a trail for other renewables. We’re promoting the generation
form of the future.”
