In a book released today, Dr. John Etherington - former Reader in Ecology, Thomas Huxley Medallist at the Royal College of Science and former co-editor of the Journal of Ecology - argues that wind farm technology is a wholly counter-productive and undesirable response to the problems of climate change and electricity generation.

Political and energy analyst, Tony Lodge, presents a critical analysis of the United Kingdom's renewable energy policy which is heavily reliant on industrial-scale wind power.

This important research paper analyzes the power output characteristics of the wind energy generation supply in Britain over an extended period of time. The abstract and conclusion of the paper are shown below. To access the full report which includes many graphs of data, click on the link at the bottom of this page.

Wind turbines are known to produce shadow flicker by interruption of sunlight by the turbine blades. Known parameters of the seizure provoking effect of flicker, i.e., contrast, frequency, mark-space ratio, retinal area stimulated and percentage of visual cortex involved were applied to wind turbine features. The proportion of patients affected by viewing wind turbines expressed as distance in multiples of the hub height of the turbine showed that seizure risk does not decrease significantly until the distance exceeds 100 times the hub height. Since risk does not diminish with viewing distance, flash frequency is therefore the critical factor and should be kept to a maximum of three per second, i.e., sixty revolutions per minute for a three-bladed turbine. On wind farms the shadows cast by one turbine on another should not be viewable by the public if the cumulative flash rate exceeds three per second. Turbine blades should not be reflective.

Jane Davis of the UK tracked problems with noise from a wind farm located 930 meters from her home. Her daily log, accessed by clicking on the link below, covers the period from summer 2006 to summer 2007. She and her family have since abandoned their home due to health issues related to the noise.

Julian and Jane Davis reside on a farm in the Fens in Lincolnshire England. Shortly following the construction of a wind farm within 1000 meters of their home they had started to hear the noise of the turbines. This important paper, presented at the Wind Turbine Noise conference Sep 20-21, 2007, in Lyon, France, documents the “devastating effects of wind turbine noise pollution when wind farms are sited too close to homes or otherwise inappropriately sited.”

Based on these findings, Government does not consider there to be a compelling case for further work into AM and will not carry out any further research at this time; however it will continue to keep the issue under review. Government continues to support the approach set out in Planning Policy Statement (PPS) 22 - Renewable Energy. This approach is for local planning authorities to "ensure that renewable energy developments have been located and designed in such a way to minimise increases in ambient noise levels", through the use of the 1997 report by ETSU to assess and rate noise from wind energy developments.

This document does not question whether we should be developing windfarms or should not be developing windfarms, or even whether they look good on a landscape or are a visual intrusion on the landscape. We are simply addressing the methodology used by the windfarm industry, who in our opinion, have been using misleading methods for the last 11 years whilst seeking to obtain planning permission.

Having had more than 15 years experience in producing visualisations for planning applications, both here and in other parts of the world, what we see happening throughout Scotland and the rest of the UK is a method of visual presentation which brings our profession into disrepute. After many years of fighting for fairer standards, something has to be done because of the growing public perception that photomontage is unreliable.