Environmental action site
Wind energy control centre
The energy turnaround in Bavaria needs a political boost!
“The state government must give up its blockade policy,” says Richard Mergner, state director of BUND Naturschutz in Bavaria.
The discrepancy between words and reality, nowhere is it more evident than on the subject of wind power in Bavaria. What a lot of green progress was promised during the election campaign. But when it came down to the nitty-gritty, they said: We will stick to the 10-H rule, i.e. wind turbines only where no one lives within a radius of ten times the height. This means, of course, that for the time being hardly any new wind turbines can be erected in the Free State, and old ones cannot be renewed. This cannot continue. Together with BUND Naturschutz in Bayern and other environmental organisations, Tollwood is setting up a large wind turbine model at the Winter Festival and the State Chancellery as a control centre.
The fact is: without wind power there can be no energy turnaround, and that applies to Bavaria as well as to the whole of Germany.
Against all prejudices
The German Wind Energy Association has debunked a few myths about “evil” wind power.
The most important arguments:
- Wind is already the most important source of energy in Germany with 27 percent, ahead of lignite with 16.8 and nuclear energy with 12.5 percent.
- It is not renewable energies that drive up electricity prices, but taxes, levies and surcharges on them.
- Wind turbines almost never stand still, except for electricity overproduction, maintenance work, when birds are breeding or when they shade neighbouring buildings for more than 30 minutes when the sun is low.
- Infrasound does not make people ill. Opponents like to refer to a study by the relevant Federal Institute in 2009, but it had miscalculated and overestimated infrasound by a factor of 4000 (!).
- A new regulation means that in future the top lights will only flash when flying objects appear in the vicinity.
- So much for blight: two percent of Germany’s land area is sufficient for the wind energy needed.
- Death in a wind turbine? Conservationists complain of up to 100,000 birds killed by wind power. But bird conservationists count up to 115 million birds dying each year due to glass walls.
- A wind turbine in every forest? Particularly valuable deciduous and mixed forests or protected areas are taboo for wind turbines.
- Even tourists are getting used to wind turbines. 98 percent of the holidaymakers surveyed in Schleswig-Holstein said they were not disturbed by wind turbines.
- Wind turbines can be recycled up to 98 percent.
