The debacle over the sit-in at the Vestas wind turbine factory in Newport highglights the tug of war that renewables companies are facing with local communities in the UK and Europe.  

The "not in my backyard" mentality is pricing these companies out of the market.

Vestas decided to shut the plant earlier this month and issued a statement saying "The local planning process for the construction of new onshore wind power plants in the United Kingdom remains an obstacle to the development of a more favourable market for onshore wind power". "Since offshore wind power is still on a project basis, a large and stable market for onshore wind power is vital to secure a stable production flow."

I think that says it all.

Whilst obviously we all sympathise with those who lose their jobs, we have to accept that renewable companies need incentives to grow from a market at its infancy and they need all forms of help not hindrance. Vestas's workers would have a better chance of securing their jobs if instead of occupying the factory in question they demonstrated against the local authority and did a sit in at the Council's offices, demanding that dimwits in charge of planning applications up and down the country stop holding the renewables industry to ransom.

In order to move forward the commitment to renewables, the UK government needs to find a formula to override local authorities and allow wind power companies like Vestas to expand their operation without any hurdles.

Carbon capture experiments are meeting the same type of opposition in Europe. In an excellent article that we've cited today ("Public wary of carbon capture"), Joshua Chaffin in the FT describes how people in the  Netherlands are opposing a Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) experiment with the fear that the CO2 stored underground could be a serious health hazard (if not fatal) if it's suddenly released into the air. Oil companies have been injecting CO2 in the seabed for decades and no one has paid any attention but now it becomes an issue when people feel CCS coal stations may be too close for comfort.

As it is, CSS experiments are running late and over budget, and no one seriously expects that they can deliver emission cuts for less than £20 per tonne. This is a crazy figure. One can plant so many trees for that amount and effectively capture via Nature's way many more tonnes of CO2 for the same amount of money, at the same time restoring forests and lifting communities out of poverty. With the opposition of local communities, unless governments take a tougher stance, there will be no chance to deliver any commercially realistic form of CSS on time.

Brunella

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