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| KALPESH LATHIGRA/NB PICTURES FOR TIME |
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Power Struggle |
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Wind energy is finally taking off — but critics say it's an unviable blowhard while activists complain it's a green blot on the landscape |
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By MICHAEL BRUNTON |
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Posted Monday, May 10, 2004 17:05 GMT
In its heyday in the 1950s and '60s, the Ford plant at Dagenham — on the marshlands of the Thames at the very eastern end of London — employed up to 40,000 people and churned out 300,000 automobiles a year. But in 2002, Ford mostly pulled the plug on its carmaking facilities. Now the green marshes — encouraged by a Ford-supported nature reserve — are beginning to reconquer the concrete. Later this month, what's left of the 125-hectare plant will become even greener: the company's new diesel engine facility will be powered entirely by two 85-m-tall wind turbines. It will be the first time that a functioning wind farm has been used inside London.
The project is the brainchild of Dale Vince, an eco-activist turned entrepreneur, who launched the green energy company Ecotricity in 1995. In 2001, when Vince learned that Ford was planning a solar-powered project in Wales, he made them an offer. "I told them that for the money they were spending, they could have a shed load more wind energy at about one-tenth of the price," says Vince. And Ecotricity would pay the $5.4 million construction costs, maintain and insure the turbines and assume any financial risk. "Companies get all the benefits of wind energy: a visible symbol [of good environmental citizenship], a reduction in CO2 output, and they save money," says Vince. "It's too good to be true."
That's exactly what bothers a lot of people as alternative energy goes more mainstream: Can wind power live up to the hype? Right now, it is the fastest growing source of electricity generation in the world — installed capacity leapt by 26% in 2003 — far outpacing other alternatives like solar and tidal. Wind is on track to meet three-quarters of the British government's target of drawing 10% of the nation's electricity from renewable sources by 2010. Globally, more than 40,000 MW of windpower is now installed — 75% of it in Europe, where it's helping to contain the Continent's dependence on imported energy. At the same time, improvements in turbine efficiency mean that wind is the cheapest renewable energy and, in some instances, can compete on price with fossil-fuel-based electricity.
But as wind farms start to sprout in cities, in rural areas and offshore, voices of opposition are growing louder. Even in Germany, home to half Europe's wind-blown wattage, protests are growing over government plans to double the number of wind farms by 2020 to help reach its goal of reducing carbon emissions by 40%. And in the U.K., which now has more than 1,000 turbines, communities are beginning to reject wind farms as "visual pollution," (as campaigners put it in Shipdham, a village 165 km northeast of London, which for two years has been fighting off planning permission for two Ecotricity turbines). Bernard Ingham, vice president of the advocacy group Country Guardian and former press secretary to Margaret Thatcher, has called wind turbines "whirling steel bog brushes in the sky. They are not sustainable. They are compelling symbols of green tokenism."
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