The wind that rocked the community

Countryside Column 22 November

The wind that rocked the community.

On the bottom of our Parish Council planning agenda for the past several months has been notice of an appeal against refusal to allow a wind turbine on land just outside the village.

The original application, considered before I became a member, was for a single 18-metre Gaia turbine that can produce around 11kW of electricity. It’s about twice the height of a two-storey house, has a double blade and is mounted on a tubular frame.

The idea was not popular among local residents, who quickly got up a sizeable petition, arguing it would have a detrimental impact on an area of outstanding natural beauty, the setting of listed buildings, tourism, amenity and wildlife habitat.

Interestingly, the then Parish Council remained neutral on the application. And I’ve been wondering how I’d have voted. On the one hand I strongly believe we should be doing everything possible to reduce our reliance on burning fossil fuels with the concomitant carbon dioxide ‘greenhouse gas’ emissions. I remain fearful of nuclear power and unconvinced we have the solution to radioactive waste. So that leaves renewables - largely sun, wind, water and biomass. But the truth is they produce relatively little heat or power for the investment or, in the case of wind, for the impact on the landscape.

The view from Rye towards Dungeness over the Romney Marsh is now littered with wind turbines. Some may find them beautiful; others awful, but none can deny they have significantly altered the topography.

Individual units in your paddock or back garden though? I recently wrote about the number of windmills he had around here. Now we love them. Yet they’re significantly more obtrusive that the Gaia. Could we not learn to love wind turbines? Or solar panels? I know of at least one local farmer considering covering acres of pasture land with solar units. Sheep may safely graze beneath and around them, but they will change our perception, and the colour, of the landscape. But then I suppose so did oilseed rape when it was first introduced.

One suggestion would be for every household in the land to move towards self- sufficiency. Financial incentives or discounts on other fuels could help every one of us install solar panels, or photovoltaic cells, or biomass boilers, or heat pumps.  Or even small wind turbines. Though I anticipate the latter might garner a flurry of objections from neighbours!