Merkel Expert Requests 10H Turbine Setback Rule, Would Seriously Obstruct Wind Energy Expansion

Online German business daily Handelsblatt here reported last month that leading German energy expert Jens Koeppen of Angela Merkel’s CDU party is calling for “drastic” permitting rules when it comes to installing wind turbines.

Wind turbine towers over German landscape. Photo: P Gosselin

The proposed rules would make a number of proposed wind projects impossible.

Currently a work group that is focused on acceptance and made up of members from the coalition parties is trying to figure out a way to get around the rapidly growing protests against more wind turbines, whose erection are deforesting and industrializing large swaths of Germany’s idyllic landscape.

Traditional environmentalists and conservationists are livid over the environmental destruction and health risks posed by wind parks.

Protests have become formidable, and as reported yesterday here, Germany’s expansion of wind energy has literally ground to a halt as a result and has thus angered climate protection alarmists and Big Wind lobbyists.

The Handelsblatt writes citizens are tenaciously fighting the installation of 200-meter tall turbines, even doing so in court, and explains how one CDU-politician is calling for a nationwide wind turbine setback rule based on the one used in the southern state of Bavaria.

Bavarian 10H rule has effectively stopped new wind projects

The Bavarian 10H rule forbids the installation of any wind turbine within a distance equaling 10 times the height of the turbine from any residential area. That means no 200-meter tall turbine can be built within 2 kilometers from a residential area. In Bavaria that rule has literally ended the installation of new wind turbines.

Koeppen told the Handelsblatt that “the citizens must be taken seriously” or else “no progress will be made”.

Currently there’s a wave of lawsuits challenging wind park proposals across the country.

Communities risk being surrounded and plagued

The German UBA Office of Environment, however, warns that even a distance of 1000 meters would reduce the area wind turbines by up to 50% in some places.

Citizens are also very concerned about the health impacts from infrasound generated by wind turbines, which experts claimed can have an impact 10 kilometers away.

Once peaceful communities now find themselves divided

Wind energy has not only divided the environmentalists, but also disturbed the tranquility and harmony once found in many idyllic communities across the country.

Politicians as well are divided. The conservatives in the CDU aim to assure adequate setbacks for wind parks near communities. The socialists in the SPD, on the other hand, wish to relax the rules and thus clear the way for more wind park installation near communities.

18 responses to “Merkel Expert Requests 10H Turbine Setback Rule, Would Seriously Obstruct Wind Energy Expansion”

  1. sasquatch

    The Titanic sunk once first time out to sea. A lesson learned, icebergs were tracked and given healthy distance away from seagoing vessels.

    Over at save the eagles there is a page filled with photos of dead raptors shuffled from their mortal coil by just guess how it happens. Today’s entry at stop these things is filled with photos of collapsed wind turbines,a plethora.

    It is true, you know, humans keep doing the same thing over and over again thinking the results will be different each and every time. You can’t fix stupid. It is definitely infinite.

    You Would think the people in charge of the policy would finally learn a thing or two about a thing or too and realize they are doing it all wrong. Guess not.

    Their wind and solar Titanic will sink, slowly but surely.

  2. sasquatch

    Oops, made a spelling error. Two, not too. Everybody makes mistakes where is auto correct?

  3. John F. Hultquist

    The term ” wind park ” ought to be replaced with

    industrial wind facility

    Output is best at wind speed of 60 km/hr and tip speeds will be about 80 m/s.

    If you are close to a large tower and the blades are moving at their optimum rotation there is the sound of a wind of about 80 km/h. These things do not a park make.

    1. Yonason

      80 m/s

      …*60s/min*60min/hr = 288,000 m/hr

      2/3*288 km/hr = 192 mph

      So, if your 80 m/s is correct, the top speed would be 192 miles per hr.

      Checking….
      The 80 m/s seems right for some.

      According to this (see – 2. “How fast do the blades turn,” where they claim that at max speed it’s 180 mph)
      http://www.acua.com/uploadedFiles/Site/About_Us/WindFarm.pdf

      Close enough.

      Nasty things! So, yes, it’s not a “park” at all, but a hazardous industrial zone. (See my comment below to sasquatch for links to what has gone wrong in them. (I know you know it, but others might not.)

  4. Yonason

    ”where is auto correct?”

    Slowly I turned. Step by step… (diabolical laughter)

    1. – I HATE auto-correct! It takes a bad spelling that any child can figure out (two vs too – yeah, got it), and turns it into either an impossibility or a total embarrassment.

    2. – it only “corrects” misspellings of words not in it’s dictionary, not grammatical errors.

    //rant = off//

    Now, here are some thinks I thing you’ll really find interesting (see what I did there btw? No correction needed below. You know what I mean.)

    https://www.eastcountymagazine.org/dark-side-“green”-wind-turbine-accidents-injuries-and-fatalities-raise-serious-safety-concerns

    http://www.caithnesswindfarms.co.uk/AccidentStatistics.htm

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/316554573_Wind_Turbine_Accidents_A_Data_Mining_Study

    “Green” energy takes us backward in so many ways! (as you obviously know)

    And as to people “learning a thing or two,” As they say, it’s hard to learn when you are getting 💰💰💰💰💰 not to.

    PS – Please keep up your otherwise informative and entertaining posts. I do enjoy reading them. 😁

  5. Steve

    I know they are around somewhere but I have never seen or heard one of those wind turbines !!!!!

    1. John F. Hultquist

      Steve,
      Seriously, you should find a project with a tourist facility and go for a visit. Since I was about 10, I have gone to glass factories, steel mills, plywood, woolen, big dams, drink bottling places, and the Hershey plant where they make chocolate kisses. A few others, too. Cheese, wine, beer.
      Near my boyhood home there is a pig-iron furnace; now an historic relic. https://media1.trover.com/T/53ef9bbdc2c19201ca001b4f/fixedw_large_4x.jpg
      Soon, hopefully, to be joined by wind towers.

      1. Yonason

        My parents used to do that. VERY educational, and great fun. They even took me out of school one day a year to go to a multiple county exhibition – saw the Blue Angels perform there when I was about 10 – WOW!

  6. Sommer
  7. Richard Mann

    News from Ontario, Canada. Please see the following article and comments following,
    In particular, please see the comment on January 26, 2016 at 2:21 pm “Here is a list of 26 statements of adverse health impacts from Huron County.”

    http://cmajblogs.com/health-canada-and-wind-turbines-too-little-too-late/

  8. Ric Werme

    10H – 2 km? Infrasound, especially at night with an air inversion, carries much, much further than that.

    People can make a case for 10 miles (16 km) from residences in New Hampshire.

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  14. tom0mason

    That will help the fuel and heating impoverished through the winter?
    I think not!
    When the cold weather hits people do whatever it takes to survive …

    That, though, makes German foresters nervous. When the mercury falls, the theft of wood in the country’s woodlands goes up as people turn to cheaper ways to heat their homes.

    https://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/tree-theft-on-the-rise-in-germany-as-heating-costs-increase-a-878013.html

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