Residents may get windmill compensation

Property owner resistance over plans to replace the country's 5000 existing wind turbines

Stalled plans to build new high-efficiency wind turbines could get a jump start thanks to a new proposal to pay residents compensation if wind turbines placed near their homes depreciate for decreased property values

Most politicians and citizens are in agreement that wind power is the way to a cleaner, more environmentally friendly future, but many also believe rows of wind turbines are an eyesore and destroy the harmony of the nation's gentle landscape.

The government therefore is working to introduce a plan where owners of homes or with fewer, larger, high-efficiency models has the government suggesting that homeowners living in the shadow of the 150-metre giants be compensated for lost property value.

Property where values have been brought down by the presence of nearby wind turbines would be compensated financially by the state. The initiative comes on the heels of a report from a special commission created by parliament to determine the most aesthetic means of erecting new windinstituting new wind turbines across the country.

Many more wind turbines are needed to be built and set up for the government to achieve its 2009 wind power goals set by a parliamentary agreement three years ago. Connie Hedegaard, the Liberal environmental minister, believes the new compensation initiative has enough backing to become reality.

‘If you live near a new wind turbine, you should be able to receive economic compensation from the state,' she told Weekendavisen newspaper. ‘But note that it is only if one can document that they've suffered a financial loss from the placement - in the same way as those who live close to a new motorway.'

Hedegaard has called together the mayors of 22 cities to discuss meet on the issue in August and put it down in black and white to work out the details of such a plan. The Opposition parties, however, are pushing her to bypass the meetings and use her authority to dictate where the wind turbines should be placed, putting up as many of the new 150-metre giant wind turbines as necessary to meet the country's targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions.

Hedegaard said she would rather have the debate on a local plane.

‘I still think it's best to discuss the situation out in the communities,' she said.. ‘There are cultural lines in the landscape that you can't necessarily see just by looking at a map.'

When wind turbines began to sprout up in earnest at the beginning of the decade, The Liberal Party's former chair, Uffe Ellemann Jensen, the former leader of the prime minister's Liberal Party, expressed the feelings of many when he called wind turbines ‘politically correct, economically questionable and ugly'.

Many residents and politicians agree with him, but Hedegaard agreed that there were still mixed feelings about them: not all.

‘Some people think they're beautiful, others don't,' said Hedegaard. ‘But if we follow the guidelines in the commission's report, then it should be possible to both further develop/ improve wind energy and set up/ erect the turbines within parks in areas where they complement the landscape.'