Opposition to turbines still strong

Opposition to the construction of industrial wind turbines in north Westmeath is a strong as ever, says Daryl Kennedy, spokesperson for Delvin Raharney Ballivor (DRB) Wind Action Group. He was speaking this week after the Gaeltech backed Bracklyn Wind Farm Ltd issued a planning notice with details for a nine-turbine wind farm in the Bracklyn area.

Bord na Móna also recently published the revised layout for a 26-turbine wind farm on its Ballivor Bog Group, including Ballivor, Bracklyn, Carranstown, Lisclogher and Lisclogher West bogs.

At 200m, BNM’s proposed turbines would be among the highest in Ireland, if given the green light when the application is made to An Bord Pleanála next year.

Mr Kennedy told the Westmeath Examiner that his group will submit objections to both proposals when they are submitted to ABP. “I’d say there are 10 or 15 different concerns depending on who you talk to. The reality is that there are communities across the country who would share the same concerns.

“Some people are against the visuals. Some are concerned about noise, especially those with children on the autistic spectrum. You have people suffering from migraines. There is concern about property values and simply the environmental damage that wind farms cause, such as the amount of concrete used and the construction of new roads. It’s not actually as green a technology as people are led to believe when they read the glossy circulars,” he said.

Mr Kennedy is deeply critical of successive government policies when it comes to renewable energy and, in particular, what he and many others see as the country’s over-reliance on wind energy.

He says he is, however, “delighted” that more and more people are realising the need to move towards other forms of renewable energy, particularly in light of a report by Dr Patrick Bresnihan of National University of Ireland, Maynooth, that predicted that if all the data centres planned for Ireland get the go-ahead, they could use up to 70 per cent of the national grid capacity by 2030.

It is time that as a country, we stop “putting all our renewable energy eggs in one basket”, Mr Kennedy says.

“I am a supporter of renewable energy, but in submission after submission that we have putting in to the department we have been saying that you cannot specialise in one form of renewable energy that is intermittent.

“You have to have a balanced approach of a mixture of energy types from solar, to deep geothermal to biomass. The department have just continued to follow the line of the wind lobby and continued to increase wind energy. If you keep specialising in one area, it eventually leads to a point where you can’t meet your growing demand. You have the perfect storm of data centres, plus wind energy as almost your single form of renewable energy source. It just simply doesn’t work.

“The possibility of us meeting our 2030 renewable objectives is impossible. If we continue in this vein and develop more and more wind, onshore and offshore, we are simply not going to get there.”

If Gaeltech and BNM are given green light by ABP, the 36 turbines will alter the rural landscape of this part of the county for generations, Mr Kennedy fears.

Expressing the view that the turbines will be obsolete before their 30-year operational life comes to an end, he says he and his neighbours will have to endure looking at a “turbines which no longer make any sense to install”.

“The government department responsible, under misdirection from the Greens and influenced by the well funded wind lobby, have resulted in this country having really only one renewable energy source (wind), which is intermittent, and no energy storage to cover the windless days and nights of a frosty winter when we need most energy. We need to stop wind development and switch attention to other renewable sources, to have a balanced, reliable energy system.

“The reality is most of us really struggle to visualise in our minds the height of something that is 200m up. This is a flat part of the country and turbines will really take away so much from the landscape.

“One they go up, they will be there past 2050. A lot of us around here won’t be alive by then. That’s a phenomenal thought,” he said.