Wind industry bids to win over doubters

Wind farms could supply all of Europe's energy, the industry says.

LONDON - 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 sceptics 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 organisation 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 per cent 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 per cent 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 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 said.

- REUTERS