AS IF the foregoing isn’t enough to chew over, there is also the not-in-my-back-yard brigade to contend with – individuals, various NGOs and other organisations, poorly conceived national and local-government policy and planning decisions, and so forth. With 6,000MW of projects stuck in planning, the UK is a prime example of where there needs to be a big-time sort-out.
I’m not suggesting that windfarm, hydro-power and other renewables developers be granted the kind of phone mast carte blanche given to mobile-phone operators in the 1990s, and which was later curbed, but there must be much clearer thinking on the part of many stakeholders.
Right now, there is a danger that while we fiddle in our many parochial ways – and I include certain NGOs and the UK’s Ministry of Defence – Rome will burn. If we want light at the flick of a switch in 2020, we had better accept the fact that traditional power generation must be renewed one way or another.
In our out-of-sight out-of-mind society, that means accepting that power generation capability in our own back yards. In the case of turbines, that means bays off-lying, hills behind and brownfield sites within cities, assuming sufficient wind resource.
