Wind energy 'under attack'
2011-05-05 12:35
Cape
Town - Major utilities are engaged in a discreet campaign to undermine
renewable energy projects by spreading propaganda, a wind energy expert has
said.
"Utilities have lost out to wind farms and they're losing business to
smaller companies. So they're sabotaging renewable energy projects,"
Hermann Oelsner, the president of the African Wind Energy Association, told
News24.
He said utilities were spreading "propaganda" about wind farms, particularly
in Europe where small firms are providing alternative energy sources for towns.
"They say wind farms are loud - it's utter nonsense. Noise experts check
this. You can hear wind turbines from 300m away but we won't be putting wind
farms in residential areas," said Oelsner.
The basic idea of wind energy has not changed from the kind of windmills used
during the industrial revolution in Europe, he said.
"The basic idea is the same, but the modern machines don't have a
gearbox - they have a generator."
Projects
Several
countries are building demonstration wind farms and the US recently announced
its first offshore wind farm in the Nantucket Sound.
In March, China's Xinjiang Goldwind Science and Technology, the world's fifth-largest
maker of wind turbines, opened an office in Cape Town with a view to supplying
Africa with wind technology.
Developments in Japan after the earthquake and tsunami have accelerated calls
from some countries and NGOs for an abandonment of nuclear energy in favour of
renewables, but Oelsner cautioned against large-scale projects like the
Nantucket Sound project in the US.
"The higher up you go the more wind you catch, and it's difficult enough
to do maintenance in the machine housing 50m up on land, but offshore is just a
waste of money.
"The idea is to use the electricity where you are situated, and these
massively expensive projects are advanced by people who really want to sabotage
renewable energy," he said.
According to the
African Wind Energy Association, the long term costs of wind energy are cheaper than those associated with coal.
Investors
"There are enormous transmission losses when you generate electricity far
away from where you're going to use it. When you put on your lights in Cape
Town, the air gets dirty in Mpumalanga. The long term costs for renewable
energy are cheaper than coal," said Oelsner.
He added that investors were ready to drive development of renewable energy
solutions, but that government policy was not doing enough to facilitate the generation
of alternative energy programmes.
"Money is no problem whatsoever. Policy is hindering development in this
country and once we create the industry, government should open up the market.
They should remove any restriction on the amount of energy you can
generate."
Recently, the
World Wildlife Fund for Nature (WWF) called on the government to invest in renewable energy.
"South
Africa, like other developing countries, has a vital opportunity to use
investment in renewable energy as an engine of economic development,
livelihoods and dignity. Starting that engine demands investment as well as an
enabling legislative environment," said WWF's climate change programme
manager Richard Worthington.
He added that the National Energy Regulator of SA needed to introduce a renewable-energy
feed-in tariff (Refit), which would enable independent power producers to
supply electricity to the Eskom grid.
Advantage
Oelsner said that countries in Europe were investing renewable energy, and that
SA had the additional advantage of sunshine for solar power.
"There are smaller towns in Germany and Denmark that are 100% wind energy.
And in South Africa, we have sunshine here for solar power. We should have done
this 20 years ago."
Oelsner will open the 3rd Wind Power Africa conference at the Cape Town
International Convention Centre on May 9, which will focus on issues related to
wind energy in SA.
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