Wind Turbines good for the Marine Environment

When the British government announced that there would be an expansion of off shore wind power generation, I personally gave the announcement a cautious welcome. The aspect that I was worried about was would the locating of the turbines damage habitat.

As I did not know, I decided to look into the matter and find out. What added to my concerns was that fishermen and the fishing industry were opposed to this. While I have to say that many fishermen are far from conservation minded, was this a matter where the people closest to that environment were being ignored?

The point where any turbine is located will cause some damage to the sea bed, but as has been proven time and again, building any structure out at sea actually attracts creatures. Ask any diver and wrecks are great places to find a whole range of marine wildlife. Further, artificial reefs have been created in British waters by sinking old vessels and by dropping crushed cars in the sea. All previously cleaned up so they don't create pollution it should be added. This is exactly what has happened around the the locations of existing off shore wind farms. In fact the additional habitat created by these projects are increasingly becoming important conservation areas. Therefore, my one major concern that there was a risk of damaging the marine environment is allayed as these structures enhance rather then damage marine ecology.

So why are the fishermen objecting? Well the main reason is that they would be excluded from fishing in the areas where these wind farms will be located. As each tower is spaced at five hundred metres apart, while there is room to manoeuvre a boat, any towed fishing gear would be in danger of getting snagged. Towed gear is not just simply nets, its the weights and dredges that are the greatest threat.

Here locally at Blyth where the British off shore wind industry started, the original test turbines are no longer generating electricity because the cable connecting the turbines to the shore was damaged by such fishing methods. Therefore with lessons learnt, fishing has to be excluded from the areas where these wind farms are situated and from the areas where the cables run. It should also be noted that the industrial fishing methods that will be excluded from these areas are the ones that have been most damaging to the marine environment.

The real problem with the fishing industry is that almost all the fishing methods are unsustainable. Fishermen are harvesting from the diminishing breeding population and are also taking fish and marine creatures that have not yet reached sexual maturity. Hence fishermen are and will cry foul of anything that restricts their activities. But just as happened to deep mining here in the UK, there comes a point when the industry has to end. With mining while there was still coal there, it was becoming increasingly dangerous to dig that coal out. However, with fishing unless we stop fishing now, the fishermen themselves will kill their own industry.

The fishing industry is in fact being very short sighted, as one of the advantages of the installation of all these off shore wind turbines will be to create undisturbed breeding and feeding grounds for an extensive variety of marine species. This will in time provide the solution to the collapse of marine animals that are used for food.

While I don't think that wind turbines are the whole solution to climate change, all of the incidental benefits of these off shore wind farms will make them vital for providing energy in the future.

One of the interesting things that I have discovered, Denmark have suffered much less than most nations with the hike in energy prices that has been occurring in recent years. Not least, because of the investment that they made in wind turbines in the past. While we in Britain are playing catch up on this, in ten years time we will actually have the buffer against the price rises that will happen in years to come. Equally once all these turbines are installed we will have done more to protect the marine environment than has ever happened in any part of our planet.

Our impact upon geography of our planet

I hear in the media that George W Bush has said that he is concerned about climate change and the often-stated fact that he is not is an Urban Myth. (Oh if only George W were an urban myth) But seriously, the problem with climate change is that people and politicos have taken a long time to even grasp the science of our climate, and of the way we are changing it. Further, they cant get out of the old ways of thinking, and cant get beyond the real urban myth that climate change will just mean warmer weather.

The impact of the effect upon geography of our planet was illustrated by the publication of a new edition of the Times Atlas, where two (in the reports I saw) of the largest bodies of inland water, have shrunk to ten percent of their original volume. However, as we have yet to see a clear and dramatic example of climate change in the media, people like George W can still get away with burying their head in the metaphorical sand.

Even where action is being taken such as with the creation of wind farms, it’s frequently done more for media hype and to chase the government subsidies, than as attempt to really solve the problems we face. I will write more on this once I have more facts, but briefly as the companies that are building the turbines and wind farms get tax breaks here in the UK, these farms are not being sighted in the best places, thus not producing anywhere near the levels of electricity they need to, to actually be a green source of energy. While the government trumpets this as reducing carbon emissions, it looks as if they will be Carbon Neutral at best, and because of poor placement may even have caused greater CO2 emissions from their construction than they will ever save during their lifetime of use.

The real challenge we all need to face up to is our profligate use of energy. Unfortunately, we live in a society whose whole economy is reliant upon us consuming more. Whenever there is economic news it is always illustrated by the rate that the economy has grown by. Yet this growth is at a real cost to our environment. Every new product we buy, every new gadget we use, has an environmental impact be it via the natural resources that goes into the manufacturing of it or the energy required to make it, transport it and then dispose of it.

The more we consume the more emissions we produce and the more energy is wasted. We are like children at Christmas with our consumer products; we play with them for a while then forget them as soon as the new latest wiz bang gadget comes out. The biggest difficulty is that our whole economy is built upon us consuming more and more.

Well, there is a limit to what I can consume. I spend long hours of my free time out in the countryside, and that is nearly free. I take my own rubbish (and often other peoples) home with me. If I travel I use Public Transport, or a pony belong to shanks. I try very hard not to waste energy, my electricity bill for the last quarter was twenty-six pounds my Gas costs were thirteen. I don’t waste resources like water, nor do I generate that much waste. In fact I find it impossible to fill a standard wheeled bin in four weeks. There it’s more about refusing to buy overly or heavily packaged items, and only buying enough food to use and not wasting it.

If I owned the property I lived in, I would fit Solar panels. Photo voltaic and solar heating, possibly even a small wind turbine and that way all my energy needs would be carbon free, and in time even the energy and carbon emissions of the production of my consumer goods would be removed from the equation.

Each individual action has a small effect; as can be seen in our changing climate, thus we can also collectively make a very large impact for the good.