Gog.org.nz

If the belated decision of Greater Wellington Regional Council is anything to go by, the truth about wind factories is beginning to dawn. It has called a halt to the Belmont wind farm scheme that would have blighted the landscape with up to 81 gigantic turbines.

People are beginning to realise that wind farms may not be the sustainable solution to an energy shortage. Not only do they under-perform in generation terms, they have huge negative impacts on the countryside that endure for at least two decades before they need to be taken down, or have returned the required stakeholder dividend. Any wind farm supporter who tells you otherwise is lying.

The record shows that before or at the end of their useful life, these monoliths are not dismantled. After an average of nine years, they are replaced by even larger structures that further distort the topography. Once a wind farm has been established, it also tends to expand.

Greater Wellington’s regional council has finally recognised that wind factories (and that’s what they are – massive industrial installations sneaked into rural areas) cause serious visual degradation to our beautiful land. They are often built on particularly attractive horizons, because these places also tend to be very windy.

This visual catastrophe is reason enough to question the viability of wind factories in a nation so dependent on and so proud of its scenery, and it’s probably the most important weapon in the armoury of those who oppose these hideous developments, such as those who are fighting against enormous wind refineries in Hawke’s Bay and Central Otago. But there are also other arguments that proponents of wind power conveniently overlook. Such as the fact that wind turbines are only slightly more efficient than the best steam engine ever built. And the fact that enormous amounts of immovable concrete are needed for their foundations. Concrete accounts for 7 percent of global carbon dioxide emissions. Wind turbines also break down, the gearboxes being particularly vulnerable and expensive to maintain.

The cost of producing energy from a wind factory is far, far higher than from other traditional methods. Wind power will not reduce our power bills. No nation on the planet has yet invested in large-scale wind generation without some kind of State subsidy, hidden or otherwise. Without such subsidies – be they tax breaks or carbon credits – no private generator would dream of building a wind factory.

The wind lobby says that New Zealand is probably the best place on Earth to build a big wind network, because the back-up for when the wind drops is already in place – hydro. What they don’t mention is that hydro is regularly in crisis because average hydro lake levels have been dropping for years. They are proposing two unreliable methods of generation to solve an energy problem, created largely by wasteful consumption, that could be solved quite easily.

Apart from being one of the windiest countries on Earth, we are one of the sunniest. Yet nothing serious has been done by our government to encourage consumers to harness this natural nuclear power by subsidising solar heating on their rooftops. We also have one of the developed world’s worst-insulated housing stocks, where the average inside temperature throughout the year is 12 degrees Celsius. Yet nothing has been done to seriously address this gross waste of energy by using tax dollars to insulate houses.

Instead, Minister Trevor Mallard has pushed for the abolition of open fires and wood burners in urban areas, in favour of heat pumps, which are dependent on the power supply. Which is in short supply. The sellers of heat pumps say that for every dollar spent on running a heat pump, you get at least $4 worth of heat back compared to other heat sources. Foolish people who could not add up bought heat pumps and kept them running all winter. Now, instead of their expected $4 refund for every $1 spent, some of them are in serious financial trouble, thanks to frightening and unaffordable power bills.

Ignoring the sustainability of wood and its endless supply, Mallard tries to shoe-horn thousands of people into further depending on an electricity network that pretends to be privatised, has for years raised prices well beyond inflation or justification, is in crisis, has been neglected for decades, and will – if he has his way – ruin vast tracts of our tourist paradise by peppering them with monstrous windmills. Yet highly efficient wood-burners that also heat the water are readily available. Cheap and efficient solar heating is available. Affordable on-your-roof or back-garden wind power is available. On this subject, like a Mitsubishi heat pump, Mr Mallard remains very, very quiet…

Mallard and the wind farmers (who are either big private companies, SOEs or cockies who stand to make fortunes by leasing land for wind turbines, at the direct expense of their neighbours) are tilting at windmills. If Mallard is dumped by electors, it is not beyond the bounds of possibility that he might find a new role as a clueless non-executive director of a New Zealand power company. Watch this space…

The only place for wind power in New Zealand is in small-scale, unobtrusive plants that serve local communities and get paid the going rate for supplying the national grid (rather than the derisory amount that power companies are currently prepared to pay). The only appropriate site for a large wind factory is out at sea, where it at least looks half-attractive. But wave-power generation would be much more sensible…

The tragedy of our situation is that not once in nine years, and so far into this election campaign, has the National Party given so much as a faint hint of a coherent energy policy. The suspicion is that they’ll follow form and allow minority interests to wreck the countryside by relaxing Resource Consent rules and thereby fast-track corporate vandalism. That should not come as a shock to anyone.

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