From MIKE FLOOD
Editing introduced an error into my article on the Danish offshore wind
programme which I should like to correct (Technology, 20 October). Under
its Energyplan-81, the Danish government set a target of meeting 10 per
cent of the country’s total electricity consumption – not energy as stated
in the published article – from renewable energy sources before the year
2000. This, by coincidence, is of the same order of magnitude as Denmark’s
potential offshore wind resource, estimated at 3 billion kilowatt-hours
per year. The government’s new energy 2000 Programme announced in April,
foresees the contribution from renewable electricity rising to reach 12.7
petajoules per year by 2005, a ten-fold increase on the level in 1988.
Could I also clarify one other point, the complaint that land-based
wind turbines are ‘noisy and unsightly’? I was careful to point out in my
original draft that going offshore ‘avoids potential problems with noise’;
and that noise ‘is not normally an issue except at very low wind speeds,
and then only for near-neighbours. Three-bladed Danish machines are actually
remarkably quiet. Where noise is considered a nuisance it can often be sorted
out by fitting more acoustic insulation or increasing the cut-in speeds.
In the last resort, if these measures fail the wind turbines can always
be moved somewhere else.’
As for wind turbines being ‘unsightly’, my own view is that small clusters
of three-bladed wind turbines can and do look very attractive provided they
are carefully cited in the landscape. I only wish that people living in
Britain had more opportunity to see them.
Mike Flood Milton Keynes
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