Blowin' in the wind

For wind strength is the next crucial test facing Oxford City Council, as it strives to become the first council in England and Wales to develop wind energy on its own land.

The council wants to create wind turbines on both the northern and southern edges of the city: one to be built on council-owned land between the Cowley Mini works and Horspath, with a second proposal to build a giant wind turbine at Cutteslowe Park.

And things are now beginning to move.

In a few weeks’ time the council is expected to give the go-ahead to the erection of a monitoring mast on the Horspath site, which should determine whether the wind there will be sufficient to warrant a £3m turbine with a combined blade and tower height of 130m.

The project is being carried out with Partnerships for Renewables, created by the Government-funded body Carbon Trust, with the aim of developing renewable energy projects on public sector land.

John Tanner, board member for a cleaner, greener Oxford, says that plenty of energy went into finding the right sites: “Initial research around Oxford looked at hundreds of parcels of council-owned land. As we’ve increased the details of our investigations, we have whittled it down to two sites for further consideration. Both are at an early stage of investigation and will only go ahead if research shows that they are appropriate sites.

“Modern wind turbines look good, are quiet, can provide cheap electricity for thousands of homes and are vital for Oxford to play its full part in tackling climate change.”

The announcement of the plan to build a turbine across the road from the Horspath Road athletics track stirred local opposition from residents, the Campaign to Protect Rural England and parish councillors, who feared that the turbine would damage the landscape and dwarf nearby houses.

Members of the Friends of Cutteslowe Park were equally unhappy about the impact on the park of a turbine, arguing that the council had failed to consult them properly about the plan.

But another charge is now being levelled against the idea of city wind turbines by residents like Suzanne McIvor, a member of the Friends of Cutteslowe Park.

“I am quite sympathetic to the idea of wind farms, but not spread around the edges of Oxford,” she said. “To me this smacks of tokenism.”

With successful bids for nine new offshore wind farm zone licences within UK waters recently announced, questions are being raised about the point of putting up two turbines close to Oxford’s ring road.

For, what will be the point when the turbines in the nine offshore zones could generate up to 32 gigawatts of power, amounting to a quarter of the UK’s electricity needs?

The consortium for the Dogger Bank Zone, including npower and Norway’s Statkraft, is expected to produce some nine gigawatts of energy alone.

Nobody would deny that symbolism comes into the Oxford initiative. For, why should the Town Hall not want to be seen to be setting an example when it comes to promoting renewable energy?

But do the figures really stack up and how much are taxpayers going to have to contribute?

If they are built, will the turbines stand as symbols of a pioneering green city, or quickly be viewed as costly monuments of Town Hall folly?

People should be able to make a clearer judgment this month, with the council and Partnerships for Renewables preparing to share the findings of their preliminary investigations. Public exhibitions are to be held at Horspath Village Hall on February 16; Cutteslowe Pavilion on February 17 and Oxford Town Hall on February 18 (all running from 11am to 7pm).

The turbines being considered for the two sites would have a capacity of between two and three megawatts.

Paul Robinson, city council team leader for energy and climate change, said: “Each of the turbines would generate enough electricity to meet the needs of 1,200 homes, which is a reasonable amount as far as we are concerned.”

The electricity will be fed into the local grid, with Partnerships for Renewables interested in investigating whether electricity can be supplied directly to local businesses.

“The electricity would go into the grid close to where it is used. Generating closer to electricity users results in up to ten per cent lower transmission losses, making the electricity more economical.”

The city council would be given a percentage of gross revenue from the turbines, which would be directly linked to the amount of energy generated by the turbines. But at least £6,000 a year would be paid into a community fund.

The Town Hall could also expect £30,000-a-year rental income for providing a small parcel of land used for arable crops — at Horspath — a distinct improvement on its present return on the land.

The key to viability is wind speed, although with low construction and grid connection costs, turbines could still be viable at wind speed of 5.5 metres per second, according to Partnerships for Renewables.

A planning application for a monitoring mast at Horspath is expected to be submitted shortly, which will provide data on wind flow characteristics and confirm whether the site has enough energy potential for a turbine. The Cutteslowe site will need further investigation before reaching this stage.

Mr Tanner argues the council is in a “no-lose situation”.

“There is no cost to the taxpayer associated with these projects because Partnerships for Renewables is covering the cost of the development. If the turbines are built, most of the money will go to Partnerships for Renewables and the council and the local community will get a share. Building wind turbines on council-owned land has all-party support.”

Partnerships for Renewables spokesman Tom Brinicombe said: “We do not believe this to be tokenism. We have finite resources and our clear aim is to help public sector bodies develop renewable energy projects. We won’t be able to do this if we develop projects that lose money. Every wind energy scheme is assessed on its individual merits. There are a lot of negative myths about wind energy and well-sited turbines can help encourage confidence in the technology.

“If the UK is to meet its renewable energy targets, onshore wind has a vital role to play. It is the most advanced of the renewable energy technologies and is less expensive to build than offshore wind.

“Whether you are a fan of wind turbines or not, the facts are that they provide clean, green electricity on a large scale.”

Partnerships for Renewables is 51 per cent owned by the Carbon Trust, which attracted a £10m investment to carry out its work from the Government. HSBC’s Environmental Infrastructure Fund owns the other 49 per cent. Oxford is one of two councils that Partnerships for Renewables is working closely with, the other being Clackmannanshire in Scotland.

But Horspath Parish Council believes the city council is ignoring an important environmental cost closer to home — the city’s Green Belt.

Shirley Woodcock, chairman of the parish council, said: “To our knowledge, very few applications have ever been made for wind turbines within any Green Belt in the UK and nothing, ever, on this scale.”

She has also written to the city council warning of a “conflict of interest”, with the council set to receive £30,000 a year if planning permission is given.

Michael Tyce, of Oxfordshire CPRE said: “There is no justification in spoiling the setting of Oxford. These things are as large as the London Eye. I suspect that the real plan is to have a group of turbines, not just one or two. That was the original plan and it would make more commercial sense from their point of view.”

But, to add insult, we are all ultimately having to ”subsidise the landscape blight”, he argues.

“New Zealand is the only place in the world where wind farms make a profit. They should be in Scotland, the coastal areas and out to sea. But not Oxfordshire. The wind needs to be at a speed of four metres per second to generate electricity. That happens here less than half the time. It is simply ridiculous to call something an energy source, when it does not work half the time.

“In Oxfordshire, you would be lucky to generate enough electricity to cover half the running cost. But at least half their income will effectively come from subsidy.”

This results from the complicated renewable obligation system introduced by the Government to force electricity suppliers to use an increasing proportion of green energy. Presently, suppliers are obliged to buy almost ten per cent of their electricity from renewable sources, like wind farms. This is said to add £12 to every household electricity bill in the country.

Failure to meet their green energy targets leaves electricity suppliers effectively facing massive financial penalties. To avoid them means they seem all too ready to pay well above the odds for electricity generated by wind turbines, with the cost passed on to the consumer.

Mr Tyce said: “It produces a totally false market for renewable energy. It is the subsidies that make the wind turbines profitable, not the energy that the wind turbines produce themselves.

“While it will strike some people as fair to have subsidies to start up an industry, it does not seem at all reasonable to set up a permanent system of subsidy for wind farms that could not otherwise hope to be profitable.”

Villagers have also complained that while the financial benefits will be shared by Partnerships for Renewables and the Town Hall, the visual impact will fall solely, in the case of the Horspath turbine, upon the residents of Horspath and Garsington.

A report on the Cutteslowe proposal went before the city council area committee last week, following complaints from councillors and residents that they first learnt of the scheme from a notice in The Oxford Times.

Graham Jones, chairman of the Friends of Cutteslowe Park, believes the planned exhibitions are premature.

“There seems to be real confusion about the need for buffer zones between the turbine and residential properties and the ring road. At the park we are concerned about the impact on badger setts, allotment land and a community woodland.

“Nobody disagrees with wind energy but is it really viable here and you wonder if this is really what the park is for.

“One thing is for sure, wind turbines are not going to cover the kind of shortfall in energy that we have experienced in recent weeks.”