Wind farm would not help nature – only serve the interests of industrial society

Massive ‘renewable’ energy production installations (such as wind and solar farms), if sited poorly, tend to disconnect people and communities from the natural environment. Find an image of Hornsea-2, the world’s largest wind farm, located 55 miles off the coast, and then imagine something similarly sized just six miles off Guernsey’s south and west coasts. Or reflect upon photos of Shotwick Solar Park, or Taihang mountain solar farm.

As far as I am concerned, the use of such massive technologies in relatively virgin natural places constitutes the despoliation of those environments. The clear and wide oceanic horizons that surround Guernsey are the only wilderness we have left. Let us not fill these spaces with huge man-made structures. Even our view of the setting sun would forever be spoilt. We should, instead, be siting such installations sensitively, so as to harm the natural world and society as little as possible.

It is too often wrongly assumed that renewables technologies such as wind and solar farms are of overall benefit to the environment, if only they can be shown to be economically viable. The truth is that, aside from a few incidental benefits (such as wind farms sometimes creating reefs for wildlife), all of the current renewable energy production technologies do damage to the natural world. All are unnatural man-made structures that impinge upon, disrupt and damage natural spaces, not only during their lifetime but also in their production and disposal.

I am not completely opposed to renewables energy projects – just as long as these are sited sensitively – because renewables can help society reverse climate change. But we should be in no doubt that climate change can only be reversed if society significantly reduces its actual greenhouse gas emissions, and then allows nature to absorb the excess. And we should be very clear that wind farms, solar farms, and other renewable energy technologies, do not actually remove greenhouse gases from the environment.

So if, say, a society with increasing energy consumption, like ours, were to install a massive wind farm purely for the extra income it would generate, but achieve no actual reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, then this would equate to nothing more than the same old damaging exploitation of nature for profit.

The sponsors of Guernsey’s wind farm project have downplayed its insensitive siting, and have instead focused on the extra income it could generate. How many of us are surprised at their temptation, given the States’ now familiar modus operandi of putting GDP before the protection of the natural environment and our society’s living spaces?

Guernsey is the only jurisdiction in Europe and the British Isles that I know of that does not have a wildlife conservation law, and does not adequately protect wildlife. If the States wants a wind farm because it is so concerned about the natural world, or concerned with our living spaces, or with greenhouse gas emissions, then how does this sit with the consumption of so much energy, and the emissions of so much greenhouse gas, in building hundreds of new homes in an already overcrowded island, often on greenfield sites (because the profit margins are greater), in an island with apparently no sites left to dispose of building waste besides natural places?

If the house building push is necessary to help normal Guernsey people out of the housing crises, then why does the States also plan to bring in 300 people every year for thirty years, which would exacerbate that crises, and why does it do so little to incentivise the building of affordable homes?

Meanwhile, the allegedly insurmountable problems of how not to build on greenfield sites, and how not to allow extensions of domestic curtilage into agricultural fields, are nothing but deliberate States policy, made possible by the planning authority when it changed the rules a few years ago.

Guernsey’s government inflates the costs of living and housing with its policies on zero corporate tax, and also high-end tax breaks aimed at attracting as many high-net-worth individuals to the island as possible (who often own several homes on the island). These policies will also exacerbate overcrowding and place public services under increased strain, while simultaneously depriving them of funding. (And the politician in charge of the tax review, who has so far not countenanced raising corporate tax to cover that funding gap, is a director of thirty-seven corporations.)

The States says it needs more money, but it refuses to tax big corporations and the wealthy, and it refuses to abandon its apparent plan for Guernsey to be the world’s first offshore city. So it turns to the convenient fix of exploiting nature in the guise of a huge, very locally-sited wind farm, or some other renewables project. Such a project would not help nature, but only serve the interests of industrial society.

ANDREW LEE

Les Salines

GY4 6DN