08.04.08 Wind Turbines for motorways and public buildings

The head of the Government’s Committee on Climate Change has announced that wind turbines may have to be built on the central reservations of motorways and beside schools and other buildings, in an attempt to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. Lord Turner said that people would have to accept “some visual intrusion”, particularly in areas such as motorways where such an intrusion already exists.

He suggested that wind turbines may, at some point in the not too distant future, be a feature every 300 yards up motorways to maximise the potential of wind power. The turbines which he envisages being built outside schools, hospitals and factories would be intermediate sized rather than the huge ones which are familiar to those living in certain parts of the UK.

The Government is determined that by 2020, 20% of the country’s energy will come from renewable sources. However, after Lord Turner’s suggestions were reported in the Daily Telegraph, readers voiced concerns over not only the visual intrusion of what most perceive to be rather ugly blots on the landscape, but also the practicalities. L. A. Riches of Leicestershire pointed out that the base of a typical wind turbine tower would require almost two lanes of a motorway, whilst Andrew Merifield of Hartlepool wondered how many months of disruption the erection and subsequent maintenance of these wind turbines would cause for motorists.

Professor Jefferson of Bedfordshire was concerned about the danger to drivers of shadow flicker from the turbines. At certain times of the year the sun hits the blades of the turbine at such an angle as to cause a flickering shadow. In 2005 a turbine near a prison in Cambridgeshire was shut down for a few hours each morning to reduce irritation to prisoners.

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