Turn aside the winds of change

Wind farm fever is upon us. Almost every county council is grappling with wind-farm planning applications. "Harvesting our wind resource" is going to transform our lives, our environment, our future, we are told. But where is it all going to end?

Most of us who care about the future, and the future of our beautiful places, are very concerned.

If we can't slow down the pace, the damage may be done before we know it and the clean up afterwards - if there is one - will be long and painful. Wind farms would certainly transform our lives and our environment but, alas, not in a way we will want to remember but rather in a way our children won't let us forget.

In the circles that know the realities (and many of those are in the hushed offices of the wind turbine factories of Denmark and Germany), it is now accepted that the wind-farm thing is a mistake. Wind-farm days are numbered. Wind energy has largely had its day powering mills, grinders, water pumps. The 200-foot-tall, commercial wind-farm turbine represents an intrusive, insensitive and inappropriate technology, antiquated at its birth.

On this technology, the Danes and the Germans and others have unwisely over-developed a turbine manufacturing industry. With the industry now showing signs of wilt as their home markets show strong signs of an unfavourable re-evaluation, they are turning to Africa, Asia, the former Eastern bloc states and, yes, even Ireland, in search of new markets.

Thus, as so often happens, Ireland is following in the footsteps of others that bit too late. The Irish public is having another "sound strategy" thrust at it. Come to that, so are the powers that be, in government and semi-state.

The No lobby has little voice - seen probably as another bunch of woolly-jumpered eco-activists; Luddites. Only those with a vested interest are being heard - and many of those are foreign or representing foreign interests.

Don't get me wrong. I have little against wind energy as such - as long as it is kept in perspective. I work with it, cautiously. If you want to have a small, domestic wind turbine on your farm and produce "green" electricity for yourself, good luck to you. It is your space (to some extent). But if you want to put a farm of 50 pulsating concrete monsters on the Donegal or Connemara skyline, then I say, anything but good luck to you.

Under the protective cloak of the environmentally concerned and the "green" times that are in it, wind-farm developers are slipping our guard.

Wind farms will not, cannot ever, cater to our energy demand, or even a worthwhile proportion of it. Why? Because the wind does not blow every day. In fact, there are many days when the wind does not blow at the speed required for the wind turbines to work.

Further, we tend to have an "all or nothing" wind - a pattern involving regular storm-force winds, gales and severe gusts interlaced with calms. Ask any sailor. The wind-farm lobbyists call it one of the best wind regimes in Europe. Realists call it one of the most destructive and unpredictable wind regimes on the planet.

Even as an interim technology, wind farms make no sense. Thousands would be needed to have even a worthwhile effect on our energy demands - or an even noticeable reversal of global warming. If the same money, time and effort spent on wind-farm development, were to be spent on a proper national programme on energy awareness and energy efficiency, we would be embarking on the fastest and most cost-effective route to reduce power demand and destructive emissions. Alas, such programmes don't translate into big profits for the few. Nor is such a programme glamorous.

Further, without arresting our increasing energy demands, all these wind farms would no more than chip at our annual energy consumption increases.

Since 1992, when wind farms got their first foothold in the UK, there has been an annual average increase of about 2.4 per cent in electricity demand. In 1996, wind power provided a mere 0.15 per cent of the national demand, taking 600 wind-farm turbines to achieve this. It would require, therefore, a 16-fold increase in wind farm output, just to cover the annual 2.4 per cent increase. Why chase an increasing energy demand by visually polluting our rural profiles with the use of a redundant technology when, with ease, we could just decrease our demand? If we do need an interim clean energy input (and I believe we do not), let's go with hydro. We have plenty of falling water. Small to medium hydro stations can be low-profile, visually acceptable (if visible at all), and so on. In Ireland they can produce power 24 hours a day, every day and we have hydro experience. Work is being done on hydro under the present initiatives, but not enough. The sustainable way forward into the solar century is a mere two-step exercise. First, we must embark on a serious energy-efficiency programme. Second, by the time we have that programme tuned to an art, we will be ready, and qualified, to be part of a very mature solar programme.

For while the wind does not blow every day, the sun does shine every day. If it did not, there would be no life on the planet. No rivers, no rain, no light of day and yes, no wind - and no oil The sun is the mother of all energies. It holds the gift of an endless energy supply with guaranteed output every day. So why do we not look to energy from the sun? Internationally we do. Nationally we do not. Passive solar building design and solar water heating get only the very occasional airing while the amazing solar cell is almost unknown.

The big solar secret has been out since 1839. Sunlight - yes, light - can produce electricity: endless, free, clean, silent electricity. Today, millions of people, from Nigeria to Norway, Argentina to Alaska are enjoying life with solar electricity. More than a few years ago, Fritjof Capra announced that the new millennium must coincide with the birth of the solar age - and the end of the paternal society. How right he was, on both counts. Already solar energy is on something of a runaway boom in the informed world. It is hardly mentioned in Ireland - an almost unknown technology, it seems. By the year 2010, the solar revolution will have dramatically transformed our lives. Just as the present wind-farm programme is getting into full swing - if we let it, with towers, blades and pylons everywhere - we will have the capacity to make many urban buildings become solar electric generators. My own office already is one. A great new solar day is just around the corner, believe me, and the countries trying to sell us wind farms are heavily into it.

The one million roof programmes in the US and the 1,000 roof programmes in Germany are already testament to the solar success. Let's wise up. Wind farms are bad news, long or short term. They will visually pollute our wild places. They constitute a danger to us and our wildlife. They are going to foul our environment, our main attraction.

We will only be left with thousands of redundant, concrete monsters (more than 1,000 now stand rotting in the US) - monuments to yet another Irish folly.

James Kenny is a consultant in renewable energy, appropriate technologies, environmental issues and eco-tourism.