When the wind blows

Wind fa s. nviron a is andowner Hugh Raven knows which he would choose for Scotland

My first encounter with a wind farm was in the company of a radical environmentalist, passionate about renewable energy and given to colourful gestures. He tried to embrace the elegantly tapered white column that is a modern windmill's base. Fortunately, it was too stout to be hugged; embarrassed. I looked away. I have always been in favour of renewable energy — but not. I hope, sentimentally or superstitiously so. In the years since that hillside tryst, wind power has burgeoned from fringe interest to national preoccupation. Then, its followers were eccentrics; now the whole country takes a view, for or against.

Given its lukewarm commitment to other aspects of sustainable development, the government's policies to curb emissions from power plants have been rather impressive. From eager advocacy of the Kyoto Protocol to setting ambitious targets to rut the UK's carbon dioxide output, Tony Blair's administration has an honourable record. In contrast to other vaunted green commitments, these have teeth: the mechanisms are there to oblige our energy generators to meet them, or pay dearly for failure.

By requiring a steady increase in the proportion of generation from renewable sources, the government has provided incentives for investment in green power on an unprecedented scale. Most renewable technologies — such as tidal stream, wave power, biomass and the better-developed but still expensive solar generation — are still in their infancy. Hydro is already well exploited, but since wind is now both mature and relatively low cost, it is attracting the lion's share of funds. Wind farms at sea are now coming through the planning process, but with offshore technology still far from perfected, the onshore wind industry will continue rapidly to grow. The UK now has about 800 megawatts of installed wind energy capacity, from around 1,150 operating turbines. At an average output of a little over a quarter of their capacity, this supplies the energy needs of about half a million homes.

In the 13 years since the UK's first commercial turbines were installed in Cornwall, the profile of the machines has radically changed. On the small Hebridean Isle of Muck, some 20 miles from where I write, first-generation wind turbines brought electric power far more cheaply to the islanders than their former diesel generator. Sixty feet high, producing up to 25 kilowatts (enough for roughly 15 households), they seem quaint relics from a bygone age. Maturity is measured in scale: third-generation machines are now coming on stream which are a hundred times more powerful and six or seven times taller. But while the technology has matured, the public discourse has not. The UK is the windiest country in Europe, with about two fifths of the continent's entire wind-power opportunities. Of those, the Highlands and Islands of Scotland have a huge proportion — easily sufficient to meet the entire UK's ambitions for wind power. The point is not lost on wind-power entrepreneurs: the largest of the region's six local authorities currently has before it more than 90 planning applications for windpower developments. No wonder it is known as the Saudi Arabia of renewable energy. But if you imagine that would make for well-informed debate, think again.

There are many legitimate arguments against wind farms. Unobtrusive they are not. With the latest turbines jabbing their fingers over 400 feet skywards, they are hard to hide. Pylons are needed to transport the power— and pylons sprout cables to hook them into the grid. In an area world-renowned for its beauty, the choice of sites is extremely sensitive.

In some conditions the turbines can be noisy, and there may be real (but so far little understood) concerns about infrasound — low-frequency noise nuisance, imperceptible to the ear, which insidiously affects its victims' sense of wellbeing. The roads required to install and service the turbines cut scars across bare hills. Windmills can be bad for birds, too — through damaging their habitats, disturbing their behaviour patterns or simply killing them in collisions with rotors. In California and Spain, for example, they have killed hundreds of rare birds of prey.

All these arguments are reasonable, when reasonably expressed. But in Scotland, at least, moderation is in full flight. Such points are made mainly in hyperbolic pamphlets and on vitriolic, homespun websites. Curiously absent is any mention of the nub of the argument. Climate change carries the threat, through unsettling ocean currents, of plunging wet but mild Scotland into a sudden and brutal ice age. The point is well made by one of the UK's leading oceanographers, who startles visitors to his Argyll laboratory with montages of ice floes in well-known sea lochs. An educated guess suggests it is happening already: average wave height on our Atlantic shores is twice the level that it was in the 1950s; and it's not only Boscastle that gets engulfed in seas of mud. That same week, in Scotland, five different landslides closed important trunk roads. Winter flows in Scotland's rivers are almost 50 per cent higher than they were 40 years ago.

In other words, while insensitive development of wind power could have serious effects on many aspects of Scottish life, doing nothing could be infinitely worse. Not once have I heard anti-wind-farm campaigners tell us how they would tackle climate change. Their only acknowledgement of its existence is to deny that it can be mitigated by wind power. That is the most pernicious lie of all. Like many persistent fallacies, this one is based on a kernel of truth. Wind power, by definition, is intermittent — producing power only when the wind blows. Lest the turbines be becalmed, the argument goes, other sources of power must always remain ticking over — an inefficient process, it is alleged, that increases carbon emissions.

Wind does indeed require backup: its yield cannot be controlled at the flick of a switch, and the turbines can stop during periods of high demand. In case of these eventualities. more controllable sources of power must be on hand. But while generating, wind power directly displaces other sources of power — and if that power is fossil-fuel based, as is most of our electricity, then carbon emissions are directly reduced.

R ely-i ng on wind for more than a certain proportion of national energy supply would be rash — with Californianstyle power cuts a possible outcome. But the UK derives less than 1 per cent of electricity from wind, and is still a very long way from reaching that point. The anti-wind campaigners who claim otherwise show an ugly disregard for the truth.

These arguments — or rather one side of them, the ones against harvesting the wind — have recently been rehearsed in the community in which I live. The area has caught the eye of a wind-farm developer because it has good wind potential, few landscape designations and is outside the area the MoD has declared off-limits. One possible site for development is on my own family's land here in west Inverness-shire (so there's my interest declared). Europe's largest quarry occupies a neighbouring hill, leaving an area — to put it politely — heavily modified by industry. A good place, you might think, to form the backdrop for a wind farm.

The arguments are, to my mind, evenly balanced. Potential damage from windmills must be exhaustively investigated and set against a fair assessment of their help in mitigating climate chaos.

If these points determine the outcome in this and the hundreds of other current wind-farm applications, then justice will be done. We must hope they prevail in the planners' deliberations — and are not drowned out by the wild cries of the nimbys.

'They forget that climate change is the biggest threat we face. And offered a choice between windmills and icebergs. I know which I would prefer.

Hugh Raven is a director of Ardtornish Estate Company, a board member of Scottish Natural Heritage, and a UK Smstainable Development Commissioner.