Growing Protest Against Onshore Wind Power in Holland
Culemborg in the Netherlands. The video shows three large wind turbines of 120 m high. Now the municipality wants to build six additional wind towers of 270 m, essentially six Eiffel towers in a rural environment. The local population is not amused.
Detractors of renewable energy often make the claim that renewable energy isn’t “dense enough”. From a technological production point of view this is a bogus argument. Even a densely populated, highly industrialized small country like the Netherlands can generate all the energy it needs from wind and solar on its own soil. However, the visual impact of that undertaking will be huge: solar panels on every suitable roof and wind turbines as far as the eye can see. In this visual sense, the “low energy density” of renewable energy cannot be easily dismissed. Like in Germany, the NIMBY is rearing its head. Everybody loves green energy, only not in my backyard.
What to do? For the Netherlands there is a perfect alternative: to build these mega-structures in the North Sea rather than onshore, as the local herrings have no NIMBY lobby. The Netherlands consumes on average 13 GW electricity, the potential of the North Sea is at least 70 GW, more than enough for Dutch needs and then some. Note that to electrify your entire society you need to roughly double existing electricity generating capacity.
But the growing resistance against too much renewable energy illustrates the point that it will probably be unrealistic to assume that Europe will be able to generate all the energy it needs from its own soil. The German government in its wisdom has already anticipated that given and foresees that African countries could use their abundant sunlit territory and immense supply of cheap labor to produce affordable hydrogen… with German electrolysis equipment. The best strategy for Europe is to produce a certain minimum of renewable energy “home-grown” and outsource the rest to poor countries in dire need for cash and solve many problems in a single stroke.
Having said that, the last word about the intended huge wind turbines near Culemborg hasn’t been said. The good people of Paris for instance resented the Eiffel Tower initially and the promise was that it would be taken down directly after the world exhibition of 1889. It is still standing and nobody wants to take it down anymore and it will probably stand for another three centuries, engineers ensure us. Likewise, there was a lot of initial resistance against the Dutch onshore Westermeerwind project too. Meanwhile, people have grown accustomed to the presence of the wind park and even have grown fond of it. Could happen to Culemborg too.
[nos.nl] – Inwoners Culemborg verzetten zich tegen plannen voor nieuwe windmolens
[Google Maps] – Culemborg wind park het Rode Hert
[deepresource] – German-Moroccan Hydrogen Agreement
[deepresource] – Germany Embraces the Hydrogen Economy
[deepresource] – Past & Future of Dutch Energy Production
[deepresource] – Westermeerwind Offshore Windpark Construction
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