
Why the Dutch oppose windmills - prostoalex
http://www.economist.com/news/europe/21656730-wind-energy-once-powered-netherlands-not-anymore-dutch-quixote?fsrc=nlw%7Chig%7C2-07-2015%7CNA
======
wobbleblob
The energy situation now is:

\- A legal requirement to cut CO2 emissions

\- A ban on building new nuclear plants as well as a commitment to close the
remaining one

\- A moratorium on building windmills because they scare birds and pollute the
horizon

\- The largest supply of natural gas in Western Europe, but an increasing
limit on exploiting this because shifts in ground level are causing cracks in
people's walls.

\- A ban on fracking

\- There so notoriously little sunshine that people refuse to take solar power
seriously, even though it seems to be working just fine in Germany.

Different groups want opposing things. The energy situation would be fine if
environmentalists would allow the construction of more windmills and nuclear
plants, or if the CO2 reduction target was dropped. You can't have it both
ways.

The people in Groningen would probably be fine with continued exploitation of
the gas wells if the profits were spent there, but the money is needed by the
national government to meet the EU's budget deficit requirements. Now much of
it will remain in the ground while we buy Russian gas.

In my opinion the very concept that a horizon is something that can be
polluted is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. I think the Dutch landscape
is featureless and boring, and windmills are a vast improvement. They look
modern, industrious, cheerful.

~~~
pgeorgi
> I think the Dutch landscape is featureless and boring, windmills are a vast
> improvement. They look modern, industrious, cheerful.

I recently visited relatives in a German village where in the last few years a
bunch of windmills where built. We went for a walk outside the village, and I
heard a surprised "oh, those windmills are much smaller than I remember them
to be".

Turns out they looked imposing and scary in the beginning because they're of
such a different scale than anything else in the area, but they got used to
them quickly.

Like the Netherlands it's a relatively flat area, so I guess the effects will
be similar (windmills looking huge at first, then perceptually shrinking).

~~~
wobbleblob
They are gigantic, they necessarily tower over everything (otherwise they
wouldn't work), but once you take your gaze off the gigantic gray rotating
blades against the clouds, and direct your eyes further down, you see [1] or
[2]. Then you gaze back up again and think the windmill looks grand and
beautiful in comparison.

[1] [https://stock-
foto.nationalebeeldbank.nl/nationalebeeldbank_...](https://stock-
foto.nationalebeeldbank.nl/nationalebeeldbank_2014-1-842411-2_kletsnatte-
akker-in-polder.jpeg)

[2] [https://stock-
foto.nationalebeeldbank.nl/nationalebeeldbank_...](https://stock-
foto.nationalebeeldbank.nl/nationalebeeldbank_2012-11-762840-2_moderne-
woningbouw.jpeg)

~~~
pgeorgi
They're large, of course.

It's simply a matter of visual expectations: There's this flat land, with tiny
houses, some forests surround it. Everything is laid out horizontally more
than vertically. Then these vertical spikes appear.

In such an environment windmills can seem frightening at first and feel like
they're at least(!) 500 meters high since there's no frame of reference to
them in the vertical.

At some point they're simply large (still larger than everything else, but
church towers, the former larger-than-everything structures, aren't
frightening either - because people are used to them).

~~~
wobbleblob
Are you referring to Northern Germany? It has been a long time since the
Netherlands looked like that. It's flat, but the endless "vinex wijken" of
identical tiny "rijtjeshuizen" are everywhere. Instead of forests, there are
geometric rows of identical Populus × canadensis clones. At the very least I
think the windmills fit right in, in many cases I find it makes the landscape
look nicer, with an added vertical element and some movement. Vastly nicer
looking than a coal plant.

------
jacquesm
I have 3 2MW+ machines a few hundred meters from my house and 10's of smaller
ones (older models) a little further away. Total impact on day to day living:
none.

I wouldn't mind it if they placed more windmills there either, it's not a
densely populated area.

So, not all Dutch oppose windmills and renewables at this scale really do make
an impact.

~~~
wobbleblob
I agree, I'm quite fond of them. People who claim windmills have no place in
the Dutch landscape probably don't like tulips and clogs either.

------
teekert
I know someone with a windmill close by, you hear it constantly and at a
certain time during the day the sun shines on the house via the rotor, when it
rotates it's like a cloud goes in front of and away from of the sun, at 1-3 Hz
or so. It drives them crazy.

~~~
jacquesm
They must be extremely close to the machine _and_ the suns path would have to
intersect the blades 'just so' for this to happen.

I can see how this would be a very annoying thing to experience, do you know
how many minutes per day this line-up causes the problem?

~~~
reycharles
Here's a video I found of the flickering:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbIe0iUtelQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MbIe0iUtelQ)

According to the video description the windmill is 1000 feet (304 m) away, and
is 40 stories (132 m) tall. FWIW in Denmark windmills have to be at a distance
from nearest (inhabited) building by least 4 times the height of the windmill
(source: [http://naturstyrelsen.dk/planlaegning/planlaegning-i-det-
aab...](http://naturstyrelsen.dk/planlaegning/planlaegning-i-det-aabne-
land/vindmoeller/afstandskort/)).

This article
<[http://www.windpower.org/da/energipolitik_og_planlaegning/na...](http://www.windpower.org/da/energipolitik_og_planlaegning/nabo_til_en_vindmoelle/skyggekast.html>)
says that the windmills can cause shadows for up to 4-6 weeks a year. It is
computed when this will happen and the windmills can be stopped for that
period, although the law doesn't mention this.

I linked the Danish sources. You might want to put it through google
translate.

~~~
mattmanser
Why did they build them so close to houses? That's nuts.

------
gbtw
I actually have 3 windmills in my back yard (the local industrial estate
across the busy through-road)

You never hear them and hardly ever notice them once they are placed.

[https://www.google.nl/maps/@52.037446,4.506723,3a,75y,90t/da...](https://www.google.nl/maps/@52.037446,4.506723,3a,75y,90t/data=!3m8!1e2!3m6!1s96528239!2e1!3e10!6s%2F%2Fstorage.googleapis.com%2Fstatic.panoramio.com%2Fphotos%2Fsmall%2F96528239.jpg!7i2794!8i2040)
< is one of them.

Zoetermeer used to have 3 other windmills about 20 years ago, those were
replaced with these.

Only thing i would like is to get cheaper power, that has not happened :|

~~~
Cthulhu_
The problem with renewable energy like wind is that it's not nearly as cheap
or efficient as, say, coal power plants. That's the trade-off, really.

~~~
danmaz74
For sure wind turbines are much less efficient than coal power plants at
polluting the air. Apart from that, can you explain how could they be less
"efficient", when they consume a free and renewable resource (ie, wind)?

------
paublyrne
I often (maybe once a month) buy the Economist in print, because it is a good
read, whether or not you agree with all their opinions, and is genuinely
global in its scope. I once had a print subscription but didn't have time read
an issue each week.

I don't have an online subscription now, which makes Hacker News submissions
for Economist articles are a little problematic.

I wouldn't mind knowing why the Dutch oppose windmills.

~~~
nederdirk
Bottom line (according to the article): The Netherlands is quite densely
populated, so every wind turbine is bound to be in someone's backyard. Last
paragraph explains that more than 70% of the population is in favor of more
wind energy, but many people don't like the face of large windmill parks.

~~~
krzyk
Strange, that they call it densely populated, it's quite average for a
European country.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_and_population_of_Europea...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_and_population_of_European_countries)

~~~
duckmysick
On the list you linked Netherlands is ranked 8th out of 54 countries. I
wouldn't call that "average". Besides, the first seven countries on that list
are small. Four are microstates and the other three are British dependencies.

I'd say, for it's size, Netherlands is densely populated.

~~~
krzyk
Yes, you are right. Sorry I once again mistaken Dutch people as the ones
living in Denmark. Now it makes much more sense, once again sorry for
confusion.

~~~
jacquesm
It's actually a bit different than what you'd get from that table. NL (like
most countries) has varying population density. What's not obvious is that NL
has a crazy distribution where we have a large chunk (the 'Randstad') that
contains a very large portion of the population and a relatively much larger
area that is just about empty.

So depending on where you are you can travel for 150 Km and never leave the
built-up areas _or_ you can travel for 150 Km and you'll see nothing but
grass, cows, the occasional farm and the highway you're on (A6/A7).

------
Yaa101
The main reason of the rejection is that the dutch government is pushing that
through big companies while in germany a lot of individual owners can reap
benifit.

Dutch governemnts, especially right winged ones are very paternalistic and
dislike individual oportunism where it costs the big and powerful companies.

------
dimitar
My humble proposal to fix not-in-my-backyard - tax all local governments, give
a tax break or even a subsidy to those who have windmills.

This by the way should be the rule for the EU as a whole - some countries are
naturally better at producing renewable energy, others have nuclear plants or
coal. The ones producing renewable energy should just export it so the ones
that cannot or won't will be able to fill their quotas.

------
shiggerino
The wind turbine scam is not that much better than the solar roadways scam.
It's a huge nuisance, expense and environmental impact for very little power.

The only reasonable choice is nuclear power.

~~~
jacquesm
Why do you call wind turbines a scam? They work, they produce significant
power, are clean and the machines built since 2000 have spectacular
reliability.

The expense is lower per KWh produced over the lifetime of the machine than
most other sources of power so I'm not sure where your 'huge expense' comes
from (yes, they're expensive but you should not look at the up-front expense
without looking at the total power produced over the lifetime of the machine
multipled by the average price of a KWh over that time and then each and every
windmill installed so far except for a very few that broke catastrophically
and a lot of lessons were learned from those instances). The environmental
impact is mostly in people's heads rather than something measurable (I should
know, I have windmills within spitting distance from my house). Nuisance is a
term that would require some explanation as well.

And each windmill may make 'little power' (though we now have machines capable
of 8MW!), but in the aggregate they produce significant power.

If you feel the only reasonable choice is nuclear power then you've already
made up your mind about this but as a windmill proponent I see a place for
both, nuclear (pebble bed, _not_ old style rod reactors) or natural gas for
baseline, wind and solar for when it's available.

~~~
shiggerino
8MW sounds nice, but a nuclear power plant will easily have 4 orders of
magnitude more power output for the same visual impact, and that's around the
clock, whether the wind blows or not.

I wouldn't dismiss rod reactors outright, but developing new technology to
improve safety and fuel efficiency should of course be a priority. Especially
since weapons plutonium production isn't a priority as it was when
conventional reactors were designed.

~~~
jerven
The real problem is that the nuclear power plant will easily have 5 orders of
magnitude construction costs associated with it. And historically a 10 times
longer construction period. i.e. you have 7 years no power then a 1 GW is
added to the grid with nuclear. While wind parks are much more gradual in
rolling into production.

This more modular approach to current wind power is also why wind parks tend
to end at 300MW nameplant capacity. If you need more power its better to have
more tenders for WEPs and benefit from improved technology and economics for
the next phase.

Nuclear could be modular and cheap but currently you can't buy modular and
cheap nuclear solutions if you wanted too. So you end up with multi year areva
construction solutions.

Nuclear power with its current large plants is not easy on the grid either. In
the UK wind was really helped because all the pumped storage build to make the
60&70's nuclear fleet cost effective.

