Have the anti-wind turbine freaks won again?

The premier of Ontario, Dalton McGuinty has worked long and hard to convince the business community at home and abroad that his province is the place to invest. Towards this goal, he passed the Green Energy Act to wean Ontario off dirty coal in favour of clean alternatives like solar and wind energy. He weathered political grief from the left and the right to cut a $7-billion deal with Samsung to jumpstart a green-industry sector and build wind turbine and solar array parts here.

He even encouraged individual Ontarians to get in the game by offering high financial incentives on small solar projects. Unfortunately, news trickled out that 1,000 Ontarians have been told that the solar projects they have had installed on their property so that they can contribute electricity to the electrical grid cannot now be connected to the electrical grid because of technical problems. Obviously, the government failed to do its homework before they conned the people into installing solar panels on their property.

Then, on February 13th, came the big announcement: Ontario has abandoned plans for offshore wind turbines. Energy Minister Brad Duguid said this decision was made for environmental reasons.

It is hard to resist the conclusion that this was a politically motivated move to appease anti-wind activists. They are the people who wanted to make sure that wind turbines could never be built in Lake Ontario (off the Scarborough Bluffs that is part of Toronto). They said that the wind turbines in the lake were unsightly even though they would be some considerable distance away. They were particularly vocal and with an election coming next October, the Liberal Party currently in power is keen to get as many voters onside as they can even if it means bowing to the wishes of these critics.

The decision—in addition to killing the one approved offshore project in Kingston—-creates two larger problems: business uncertainty and leverage for other anti-wind groups.

How can anyone expect investors to operate in these election-charged attitudes? Changing the rules as the province has is the opposite of the climate of business certainty that McGuinty vowed to create. Too many U-turns, like offshore wind, will cause investors to lose confidence that Ontario’s green energy sector is a safe bet for their investments in the long term.

Offshore wind was always going to be a small part of the government’s renewable energy plan. Land turbines—there are hundreds in southwestern Ontario already were expected to be even a bigger player.

The real danger of the government’s reversal is that it emboldens critics of those projects, as well. They’ve already said thanks for the end of offshore wind turbines so how long will it be before they scream that they want the government to get rid of land turbines also?

So in trying to placate one group, the Liberals have renewed the fight in another, much larger group. And the fight for the future of wind turbines in Ontario is not one the premier can afford to lose. The reason is obvious. Ontario needs to get out of dirty coal-fired plants. Wind turbines, along with other renewables, is one way help keep the lights of the province on.

Peter Bursztn, a resident of Barrie, Ontario attended several public meetings the Ontario government organized over the years to inform people about renewable energy and to collect information from them. He said that sadly, these meetings were disrupted by members of a small group seeking to stop the deployment of wind turbines. The same half-dozen folk were present at all the meetings, shouting and refusing to allow others to speak.

He asks this rhetorical question, “Why did the anti-turbine movement begin in Ontario where wind turbines are relatively rare and recent? Why did it not surface in Europe where these devices have been whirling overhead in considerable numbers for over 40 years?” He said that in Denmark and Germany, wind turbines supply 22 per cent and 13 per cent of electricity supply and many turbines are located quite near peoples’ homes.

One answer may be that many European turbines are owned and operated by citizen groups. The money they earn stays in the community, boosting the local economy. In North America, most wind turbines are owned by large corporations who remove the money from the community and bill them for the electricity the turbines generate.

Bursztyn said that the lack of evidence that wind turbines affect health is hardly surprising. He spoke as an expert on this subject. He was a research scientist and teacher at a British medical school for 16 years. He said that he could assure people that it is extraordinarily difficult, perhaps impossible to publish negative results (He carried out an experiment and found no bad effect”).

Noise is apparently the issue. When the matter of wind turbine noise first surfaced, Bursztyn borrowed a sound pressure meter. He said that noise from highway 400 has a constant 65 decibel (db) muffled roar on a winter day. In summer, with leaves on the trees, it is 60db. He said, “I woke up at 2 a.m. on a summer night—a quiet time—and measured the sound from the highway (400 metres —1,312 feet away) at an intermittent 55db. By contrast, the sound pressure from a wind turbine is limited to 40db at 550 metres (1,804 feet). (The decibel scale is logarithmic, so 10db represents a 10-fold change in sound level.) The sound pressure from a wind turbine at 550 metres (is about one-twentieth as loud as Hwy. 400 from my house. My neighbour’s lawn mowers and snow blowers are 80 to 100db (depending on whether it is across the street or on the adjoining property), so 20 to 40 times louder than Hwy. 400. An idling city bus is 100db when you are standing beside it. A typical vacuum cleaner howls at 70db. I once measured a rock concert at 115db; it was painfully loud.”

He made an interesting observation. “I would be more willing to take the concerns of the anti-wind turbine groups seriously if our society as a whole respected my own right to a quiet life.”

Last year, my wife and I stood approximately a hundred meters (328 feet) from a wind turbine and what we heard was a faint swishing sound coming from it and it competed with the sound of the regular wind passing our ears.

Every year, according to the Ontario Medical Association, the province's coal plants kill 668 people while causing 1,100 emergency-room visits and more than 300,000 minor illnesses. For hundreds of thousands of people, this is real suffering. These costs are not factored into electricity bills. As for nuclear, estimates of the potential suffering and loss of life in a disaster are horrifying. The cost of even one nuclear disaster would have health and financial implications beyond any comparable tragedy in Ontario history. Fortunately, the threats from nuclear and the health costs of coal are avoidable.

The solution is not a new one. For centuries, energy from the sun and wind has been powering human societies, and these sources continue to fuel the modern lives of people around the world. Ontario can play a major role in mainstreaming these technologies in North America. Through the new Green Energy Act, Ontario had chosen to pursue an aggressive renewable-energy policy, recognizing that renewable energy will fuel the world's future economy. But the Act itself has recently come under attack. Unjustifiably, wind turbines are becoming public health enemy No. 1.

I would like to set the record straight on the main health-related objection to turbines: noise. Yes, noise is a health concern. At certain levels (such as jet engines or heavy industrial machinery), it can be harmful. At lower levels (such as highway traffic or incessant cricket chirping), it can be an annoyance. It also plays an enjoyable role in the background (such as when wind rushes through trees). As a society, we must balance the public good with the threat to public health and the environment. Turbine blades and moving parts do create noise. But how noisy is too noisy?

In Ontario, public health is protected from wind turbine noise by government guidelines. The Ministry of the Environment has set a maximum allowable level for turbine sound, based on the best available information. These guidelines restrict turbines to noise levels similar to those of a quiet room in surrounding homes. This typically results in residential setbacks of 400 metres, (1,312 feet) which allow for the use of these technologies without unnecessary suffering for those living around them.

While the ministry has recently proposed to increase these minimum setbacks to 550 metres (1,804 feet), there are those who argue, unscientifically, that two-kilometre (6,561 feet) setbacks are necessary. That is 1,280 feet further than one mile. This seems overly restrictive compared to the 50-metre (164 feet) setbacks required for Ontario highways, which are significantly more dangerous to public health and the environment, and often noisier. Despite that, some people are still willing to build their houses that close to the highways.

Turbine opponents argue that ultra-high-frequency noise travels farther than audible sound, often quoting a study from England's Keele University. Wind opponents conveniently ignore the study author's rebuttal to claims that this noise is audible to humans.

Peter Styles, author and former president of the Geological Society of London, has written that infrasound generated by wind turbines “can only be detected by the most sensitive equipment, and again this is at levels far below that at which humans will detect the low-frequency sound.”

The fact remains that there is no peer-reviewed scientific evidence to suggest that wind turbines are themselves harmful to human health despite the fact that a handful of Ontario MDs have made assertions to the contrary, insisting that anecdotal evidence from studies with non-representative samples constitute binding and thorough research.

Fortunately, others in the province's medical profession have been less susceptible to these arguments. David Colby, acting medical officer of health for Chatham-Kent, recently observed that, “Although opposition to wind farms on aesthetic grounds is a legitimate point of view, opposition to wind farms on the basis of potential adverse health consequences is not justified by the evidence.”

This is not to say that noise is not a nuisance or that it won't cause undue stress if turbines are improperly sited. Indeed, the setbacks exist to protect public health and must be maintained. More health studies will be important, because we may never fully understand the effects on health and the environment. But so far, the studies have shown that there isn’t the danger to our health that anti-wind turbine freaks are squawking about. It is for this reason that we must use our current understanding of this issue to make the best decision when a choice needs to be made.

The time for that choice is now. Do we allow the health of hundreds of thousands of people to be constantly assailed by continuously relying on coal to generate electricity? Or do we choose a less harmful path toward renewable energy? How do we compare a simple annoyance and obstructed views with the suffering of hundreds of thousands? Our diagnosis is clear. Ontario and other provinces in Canada and elsewhere need renewable energy, and that includes the use of wind turbines.

Unfortunately, Ontario’s premier doesn’t have the best interests of the people of his province in mind nor does he have the intestinal fortitude to stand up against the anti-wind turbine freaks who choose to ignore the fact that real problem are the coal generated plants that continue to operate. Instead, he crumbles at the feet of the anti-wind turbine freaks. He is afraid of them because he wants to stay in power and he wants everyone—including those freaks to vote him back into office again.

As I see it, he should go and the wind turbines should stay. As to the anti-wind turbine freaks—my message is clear; find a cause that is worthwhile fighting for.