By JAMES DELINGPOLE

PUBLISHED:  5 October 2012

The symptoms they claim to have suffered may vary – including dizziness; increased blood pressure and depression – but the theme remains the same

It was Uplawmoor’s tranquillity and wild beauty that drew civil servant Aileen Jackson to settle there 28 years ago.

She’d had enough of life in the big city. Now she wanted somewhere quiet and rural to start a family, keep her horses, and enjoy the magnificent views down the valley and out to sea to the western Scottish isles of Arran and Ailsa Craig.

Then, two years ago, she says, it all turned sour.

A neighbour with whom she and her family had been friends decided to take advantage of the massive public subsidies for ‘renewable’ energy.

He put up a 64ft-high wind turbine which, though on his own land, stood just 300 yards from the Jackson family’s home.

The sleepless nights caused by its humming were only the start of their problems. Far worse was the impact on their health.

Aileen, a diabetic since the age of 19, found her blood glucose levels rocketing – forcing her to take more insulin and causing her to develop a cataract, she says.

Her younger son, Brian, an outgoing, happy, academically enthusiastic young man, suddenly became a depressive, stopped seeing his friends and dropped out of his studies at college.

A turbine beside a house near Hartlepool

Aileen’s husband William, who had always had low blood pressure, now found his blood pressure levels going ‘sky high’ – and has been on medication ever since.

So far so coincidental, you might say. And if you did, you would have the full and enthusiastic support of the wind industry.

Here is what the official trade body RenewableUK has to say on its website: ‘In over 25 years and with more than 68,000 machines installed around the world, no member of the public has ever been harmed by the normal operation of wind farms.’

But in order to believe that, you would have to discount the testimony of the thousands of people just like Aileen around the world who claim their health has been damaged by wind farms.

You would have to ignore the reports of doctors such as Australia’s Sarah Laurie, Canada’s Nina Pierpont and Britain’s Amanda Harry who have collated hundreds of such cases of Wind Turbine Syndrome.

And you’d have to reject the expertise of the acoustic engineers, sleep specialists, epidemiologists and physiologists who all testify that the noise generated by wind farms represents a major threat to public health.

‘If this were the nuclear industry, this is a scandal which would be on the front pages of every newspaper every day for months on end,’ says Chris Heaton-Harris, the Conservative MP for Daventry who has been leading the parliamentary revolt against wind farms, demanding that their subsidies be cut.

‘But because it’s wind it has been let off the hook. It shouldn’t be.’

Wind Turbine Syndrome. Until you’ve seen for yourself what it can do to a community, you might be tempted to dismiss it as a hypochondriac’s charter or an urban myth. 

But the suffering I witnessed earlier this year in Waterloo, a hamlet outside Adelaide in southern Australia, was all too real.

The place felt like a ghost town: shuttered houses and a dust-blown aura of  sinister unease, as in a horror movie where something terrible has happened to a previously thriving settlement but at first you’re not sure what.

Then you look to the horizon and see them, turning in the breeze…

‘The wind farm people said we’d be doing our bit to save the planet,’ said one resident.

‘They said these things were quieter than a fridge. They said it was all going to be fairy floss and candy.

‘So how come I can’t sleep in my own house any more? How come sometimes I’m having to take 15 Valium tablets a day? How come, when I used to be a pretty mellow sort of person, I’m now so angry it’s only a matter of time before I end up in jail?’

The symptoms they claim to have suffered may vary – dizziness; balance problems; memory loss; inability to concentrate; insomnia; tachycardia; increased blood pressure; raised cortisol levels; headaches; nausea; mood swings; anxiety; tinnitus; palpitations; depression – but the theme remains the same.

Here are ordinary people who settled in the country for a quiet life only to have their lives and property values trashed at the stroke of a bureaucrat’s pen.

In December 2011, in a peer-reviewed report in the Bulletin of Science, Technology & Society, Dr Carl Phillips – one of the U.S.’s most distinguished epidemiologists – concluded that there is ‘overwhelming evidence that wind turbines cause serious health problems in nearby residents, usually stress-disorder type diseases, at a non-trivial rate’.

According to a study by U.S. noise control engineer Rick James, wind farms generate the same symptoms as Sick Building Syndrome – the condition that plagued office workers in the Eighties and Nineties as a result of what was eventually discovered to be the Low Frequency Noise (LFN), caused by misaligned air conditioning systems.

The combination of LFN and ‘amplitude modulation’ (loudness that goes up and down) leads to fatigue, poor concentration and dizziness.

And sleep specialist Dr Chris Hanning believes it stimulates an alert response, leading to arousal episodes throug the night that make restful sleep impossible.

‘ I’ve spoken with many sufferers and sadly the only treatment is for them to move away from the wind farm.’

But if the problem is really so widespread, why isn’t it better known? 

The short answer is money: the wind industry is a hugely lucrative business with millions to spend on lobbying. 

What’s more, until recently, it benefited from the general public mood that ‘something ought to be done about climate change’ and wind power – supposedly ‘free’, ‘renewable’ and ‘carbon-friendly’ – was the obvious solution.

‘For years among the metropolitan elite it has been considered heretical to criticise wind power,’ says Heaton-Harris.

A wind farm in Lanarkshire – some UK wind farms have more than 100 turbines. In Britain, onshore wind farms are subsidised by a levy on consumer bills at 100 per cent; offshore wind is subsidised at 200 per cent

In the last decade, however, a host of evidence has emerged to indicate it is not the panacea it was thought to be.

From economists such as Edinburgh University’s Dr Gordon Hughes we are told that wind energy is unreliable and intermittent, with no real market value because it requires near 100 per cent back-up by conventional fossil-fuel power.

From research institute Verso Economics we are told that that for every ‘green job’ created by taxpayer subsidy, 3.7 jobs are killed in the real economy.

It is said that thanks to the artificial rise in energy prices caused by renewable subsidies, expected to reach £13 billion per annum by 2020, at least 50,000 people a year in Britain are driven into fuel poverty.

And newly released Spanish government research claims that each turbine kills an average 300 birds a year (often rare ones such as eagles and bustards) and at least as many bats.

Yet still, despite collapsing share prices and increasing public scepticism, the industry continues to grow.

As Matt Ridley noted recently in The Spectator, there are ‘too many people with snouts in the trough.’

Aristocratic landowners have done especially well, such as the Earl of Moray (£2 million a year from his Doune estate) and the Duke of Roxburghe (£1.5 million a year from his estate in Lammermuir Hills).

South of the border, the Prime Minister’s father-in-law Sir Reginald Sheffield makes more than £1,000 a day from the eight turbines on his Lincolnshire estates. Even smaller landholdings can generate a tidy profit: around £40,000 per year, per large (3MW) turbine, for no effort whatsoever.

The biggest winners, though, are the mostly foreign-owned (Mitsubishi, Gamesa, Siemens) firms for whom wind was until recently a virtually risk-free investment.

In Britain, onshore wind farms are subsidised by a levy on consumer bills at 100 per cent; offshore wind is subsidised at 200 per cent: no matter how little energy the turbines actually produce, in other words, healthy returns are guaranteed.

The debate over wind farms has aroused huge passions.

‘I’ve had death threats. I’m told I’m a witch. I’ve had my reputation trashed in the newspapers,’ says Australian campaigner Dr Sarah Laurie.

‘And for what? All I’ve ever done is say, “People are getting sick and something should be done to stop it.”’

When Aileen Jackson protested about some of the 23 new turbine projects proposed for Uplawmoor, she too was threatened.

An anti wind farm march, led by botanist David Bellamy

Her car, she says, was vandalised; broken glass was strewn in her horses’ field; on two occasions she found her horses’ anti-midge coats had been cut off and slashed to pieces, the horses left covered in blood from where they rubbed themselves against a fence to stop the itching.

There’s no suggestion anyone locally concerned with wind farms was involved. 

But legitimate proponents of wind farms are candid about the benefits.

‘There’s so much money to be made from these things, that’s the problem,’ says Jackson.

‘You’ll talk to the farmers and they’re quite open about it. “I’ve worked hard all my life and this is my pension plan,” they’ll tell you.’

What horrifies the communities threatened by wind farm developments is how powerless they are to stop them.

At Northwich in Cheshire, I attended the annual meeting of National Opposition to Windfarms (NOW), where lawyers including Lord Carlile (NOW’s chairman) advised local protest groups on how to challenge wind developments in their area.

The desperation was palpable. Current planning laws have a presumption ‘in favour of sustainable development’.

Wind farms are deemed vital to Britain’s EU-driven campaign to cut its carbon emissions by 20 per cent by 2020. Arguments about wind turbines’ public health impacts seem to cut little ice with planning inspectors.

The whole system has been rigged in the industry’s favour. One of the biggest bones of contention is regulation of acceptable noise levels.

In Britain, wind developers are bound by ETSU-R-97, a code that places modest limits on sound within the normal human hearing range – but which fails to address the damaging aspect of wind turbines: infrasonic (ie, inaudible) Low Frequency Noise.

But according to RenewableUK’s ‘Top Myths About Wind Energy’ section, accusations that wind farms emit ‘infrasound and cause associated health problems’ are ‘unscientific’.

It quotes Dr Geoff Leventhall, author of the Defra report on Low Frequency Noise And Its Effects: ‘I can state quite categorically that there is no significant infrasound from current designs of wind turbines.’

And Robert Norris, head of communications at RenewableUK, says: ‘There’s no evidence to link the very low levels of noise produced by wind farms with any effects on people living nearby.

However, Robert Rand of Rand Acoustics in Maine, who has done work on wind farms and been a consultant in acoustics since 1980, says: ‘All wind turbines produce low-frequency noise. The reason it doesn’t show up on wind industry tests is that the equipment they use excludes low-frequency noise.’ 

Dr John Constable Director of the Renewable Energy Foundation adds: ‘Audible noise disturbance from wind turbines, particularly at night, is known to be a very serious and fairly common problem, but low frequency noise is a mystery.

‘No one knows enough about it to say anything definite, one way or the other. This is one of those cases where more research really is needed.’

Dr Alec Salt, a cochlear physiologist at the Department of Otolaryngology at the Washington University School of Medicine in St Louis, Missouri, has studied the topic since the Seventies.

‘The idea that there is no problem with infra sound couldn’t be more wrong,’ he says. 

‘The responses of the human ear to  LFN are just enormous. Bigger than to anything in the audible range.’

Audible sound stimulates the inner hair cells on the cochlea (the auditory portion of the inner ear), but LFN triggers the outer hair cells, sending neural signals to the brain. Military special ops departments have known about it for some time.

A 1997 report by the U.S. Air Force Institute For National Security Studies notes: ‘Acoustic infra sound: very low frequency sound which can travel long distances and easily penetrate most buildings and vehicles.

‘Transmission of long wavelength sound creates biophysical effects, nausea, loss of bowels, disorientation, vomiting, potential organ damage or death may occur.’

Yet as Dr Phillips notes, instead of protecting the public, governments are actually complicit by encouraging wind farm development via generous subsidies.

‘It’s ridiculous. Here is an industry which is putting the health of tens of thousands of people at risk. If this were a pharmaceutical company sales would have been suspended by now. ’

His views are shared by orthopaedic surgeon Dr Robert McMurtry, once Canada’s most senior public health official: ‘Whatever you think about climate change, you can be sure that wind energy is not the solution.

‘There is an abundance of evidence to the show that infra sound from wind farms represents a serious public health hazard. Until further research is done, there should be an immediate moratorium on building any more of them.’

Newspaper columnist Christopher Booker called wind farms ‘the greatest political blunder of our time’ and ‘a monument to an age when our leaders collectively went off their heads’.

But a recent statement by energy minister Charles Hendry says: ‘Studies have considered the noise phenomenon known as amplitude modulation (AM) but show that to date only one wind farm in the UK has presented a noise nuisance to residents. The issue has since been resolved.

‘We will keep the issue of AM under review and welcome the additional research on AM that RenewableUK have commissioned,’ in answer to a parliamentary question from Chris Heaton-Harris.

Heaton-Harris is not impressed.

‘Wind farms are destroying people’s lives, destroying the environment, destroying the economy – but instead of opposing it, all three main political parties are committed to building more of them.

‘And it’s not accidental. This is a stitch-up between the wind lobby and its friends in Parliament and it’s an outrage.

‘It’s the biggest health scandal of our age and the metropolitan elite just don’t care.’

Bills will start to rise next year under the controversial plans revealed by industry  regulator Ofgem yesterday.

An average of £11 will be added annually for eight years, making £88 in total on top of any other increases.

Controversial: Every home will pay £88 to build a vast network of pylons in a £22billion project to link wind farms to the national grid

The scheme is part of a £200billion  programme to switch to ‘green’ energy and build nuclear power stations to meet targets to cut carbon emissions. 

This wider scheme will also be funded by higher bills for families and businesses. The network of pylons is expected to  trigger disputes amid fears that beautiful views will be destroyed.

Ofgem has said £470million should be set aside to bury cables in sensitive areas, such as national parks.

However, this is an expensive option and the sum allocated is unlikely to be enough to protect all important views.

The pylon project includes new undersea cables between England and Scotland, and Kent and the Continent as well as improvements to the existing cable network.

Ann Robinson, director of consumer policy at comparison website, uSwitch.com, warned customers to expect more increases in bills.

Worrying: Bills will start to rise next year under the controversial plans revealed by industry regulator Ofgem yesterday

She said: ‘The average household energy bill today is £1,252 a year so it’s not hard to see why an £11 increase will hurt consumers’ pockets.

‘Already over a third of consumers say that household energy is unaffordable, while more than eight in ten rationed their energy use last winter because of cost.
‘Consumers should see this announcement as an early indication of where their fuel bills will be heading over the next few years.’

The pylon programme will be carried out by the National Grid, which had wanted even bigger rises in bills to pay for the work and enable it to make a profit.

The company said the budget should have been £31billion, which would have meant £124 more per home over eight years.

Last week, a report from official advisers warned that UK industry will become more uncompetitive as soaring green energy taxes make its bills higher than foreign rivals.

Wind farms in the wrong places are turning the public against fighting climate change says Bill Bryson

Wind farms will damage the landscape of Britain for “at least a generation”, according to the author Bill Bryson, as new figures show the number of turbines onshore is set to more than triple within a decade.

Image 1 of 2

Bill Bryson, the author and President of CPRE, said wind turbines in the wrong places could be turning people against the ‘battle against climate change’ Photo: ANDREW CROWLEY

Wind farms can cause climate change, according to new research, that shows for the first time the new technology is already pushing up temperatures.

The public has bought the myths of the vast wind energy industry   –   By Terence Blacker             The Independent 30 April 2012

The energy business presents itself as if it were some sort of green charity

After almost five years of being on the front line of a battle surrounding a proposed wind farm, I have begun to feel not unlike a turbine myself – buffeted by winds from different directions, turning wearily and often to little effect.

By ROB COOPER 15 April 2012 Mail Online

Wind farms: Greg Barker hinted that the growth of onshore developments could be halted

The climate change minister hinted that there will be no more onshore wind farms built in Britain.

But with thousands more already in the pipeline it could be years before the rise of the giant steel turbines is halted.

Liberal Democrat Greg Barker said there would be no fresh wave of wind farms – although he did not rule out future offshore developments.

Just four months ago a report was published by Chris Huhne’s department calling for a further 32,000 wind farms – and suggested 10,000 could be onshore.

Critics have said the developments blight the landscape and are inefficient.

A group of 101 Conservatives said two months ago that £400million in subsidies handed to the industry each year should be ‘dramatically cut’.

Among the most controversial developments, there are plans to build four giant 328ft turbines on Thornton Moor, West Yorkshire, which was the setting for Emily Bronte’s classic novel Wuthering Heights.

Campaigners fear the turbines could cause ‘irreversible’ damage to the landscape.

In an apparent reversal of Government policy, Mr Barker told the Sunday Times that politicians would be looking to develop other power sources.

He hinted it was unlikely that there would be 10,000 new wind farms – and said that it was clear some unsuitable spots had been chosen.

‘

There are plans in the pipeline for 200 wind turbines off the south coast that will be up to 700ft high.

The 200 turbines would earn Dutch company Eneco billions of pounds in Government subsidies. Critics say they will ruin coastal views, while yachtsmen warn they could cause crashes.

Mr Barker added: ‘It’s about being balanced and sensible. We inherited a policy from the last government which was unbalanced in favour of onshore wind.’

He continued: ‘There have been some installations in insensitive or unsuitable locations – too close to houses, or in an area of outstanding natural beauty.’

David Cameron has been hit by a major protest by Conservative MPs over the Government’s backing for wind farms, The Sunday Telegraph can disclose.

There are currently more than 3,000 onshore wind turbines in Britain. Photo: ALAMY

By Patrick Hennessy, Political Editor

9:00PM GMT 04 Feb 2012

A total of 101 Tory MPs have written to the Prime Minister demanding that the £400 million-a-year subsidies paid to the “inefficient” onshore wind turbine industry are “dramatically cut”.

The backbenchers, joined by some MPs from other parties, have also called on Mr Cameron to tighten up planning laws so local people have a better chance of stopping new farms being developed and protecting the countryside.

The demands will be a headache for Ed Davey, the Liberal Democrat Energy Secretary, who joined the Cabinet on Friday when Chris Huhne resigned after being charged with perverting the course of justice.

At least 4,500 more turbines are expected to go up as the Government’s drive to meet legally binding targets for cutting carbon emissions sparks a green energy boom.

Critics say wind farms are inefficient because the wind cannot be guaranteed to blow at times of greatest energy demand. They are also said to be unsightly, blighting the landscape.

Wind farms are also accused of forcing up energy bills while swallowing disproportionate amounts of taxpayer-funded subsidies.

The Tory MPs, including several of the party’s rising stars as well as former ministers, say it is wrong that hard-pressed consumers must pay for the expansion of onshore wind power.

In the letter sent to No 10 Downing Street last week, which has been seen by The Sunday Telegraph, the MPs say they have become “more and more concerned” about government “support for onshore wind energy production”.

“In these financially straitened times, we think it is unwise to make consumers pay, through taxpayer subsidy, for inefficient and intermittent energy production that typifies onshore wind turbines,” they say. The MPs want the savings spread between other “reliable” forms of renewable energy production.

They have also called on Mr Cameron to change the proposed National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) so that it gives local people who object to proposed wind farms a better chance of victory in the planning process. The framework has finished a public consultation process and is awaiting the green light from ministers.

The letter reads: “We also are worried that the new National Planning Policy Framework, in its current form, diminishes the chances of local people defeating onshore wind farm proposals through the planning system.”

The number of Tory signatories to the letter, organised by Chris Heaton-Harris, the Conservative backbencher, means that the controversy could be the biggest protest to hit Mr Cameron since the Coalition was formed.

The letter’s backers claim that while other Conservatives who are ministers and parliamentary private secretaries are unable to sign because they are part of the government “payroll”, they too privately support the move against wind farms.

It is understood that there is also support from the Treasury. Among the signatories are former Conservative ministers including David Davis and Christopher Chope, as well as party grandees such as Bernard Jenkin and Nicholas Soames. They are joined by several rising stars including Matthew Hancock, Nadhim Zahawi and Steven Barclay.

Mr Hancock, who is close to the Chancellor, George Osborne, said last night: “I support renewable energy but we need to do it in a way that gives the most value for money and that does not destroy our natural environment.”

Another Tory MP who signed the letter, Tracey Crouch, said: “It is tragic that we blight our countryside with hideous electricity pylons and now we intend not only to do the same with onshore wind farms but also to subsidise them.

“I’d much rather see better planning regulations and greater investment in other sources of renewable energy, which will protect the beauty of our countryside for future generations.”

Latest figures from Ofgem, the energy regulator, showed that £1.1 billion in taxpayer subsidies was paid to the producers of renewable energy in 2009-10.

Of this, about £522 million was for wind power, with most going to onshore wind farms.Much of this cash ended up in the hands of energy companies and investment funds which are based abroad.

US tycoon Donald Trump has accused First Minister Alex Salmond of seeming “hell bent on destroying Scotland’s coastline” with wind power.

Mr Trump, who objects to plans for a wind farm near his Scottish golf resort, said he would not be on board.

He has written to Mr Salmond saying: “You will single-handedly have done more damage to Scotland than virtually any event in Scottish history.”

The Scottish government said Scottish waters had great potential.

Mr Trump has already said he will abandon his plans for a hotel and houses at his golf resort on the Menie Estate if a nearby wind farm is approved.

The European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre is a £150m venture by Vattenfall, Technip and Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group.

Mr Trump also writes in his letter: “Taxing your citizens to subsidise wind projects owned by foreign energy companies will destroy your country and its economy.

“These countries are laughing at you.”

He said of the future: “You will be long gone, but the people of Scotland will forever suffer.

“I have just authorised my staff to allocate a substantial sum of money to launch an international campaign to fight your plan to surround Scotland’s coast with many thousands of wind turbines.

“It will be like looking through the bars of a prison and the Scottish citizens will be the prisoners.

“Luckily, tourists will not suffer because there will be none as they will be going to other countries that had the foresight to use other forms of energy.”

Mr Trump added of his objection: “I am doing this to save Scotland.”

Mr Trump said the plans for 11 turbines in Aberdeen Bay would spoil the sea views for his customers at Menie in Aberdeenshire.

He said if the turbines were approved the last thing he would do was build a hotel looking out at it.

A decision on the wind farm is awaited from Scottish ministers.

A planning application for the wind farm off Aberdeen Bay, 2km (1.2 miles) from his golf course, was submitted to Marine Scotland in August last year.

The European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre is a £150m joint venture by utility company Vattenfall, engineering firm Technip and Aberdeen Renewable Energy Group.

The wind farm’s developers said it was a strategic development which was crucial to the area’s economic future.

“All further plans for future development, including the hotel, are now on hold until the Scottish government makes a decision on the application for the European Offshore Wind Deployment Centre.

“If the north east of Scotland is serious about tourism and creating a global golf destination it cannot allow the coastline to be ruined by an ugly industrial park directly off the shoreline.”

Mr Trump has previously written to First Minister Alex Salmond.

His letter said: “Please understand that I am not fighting this proposal merely for the benefit of Trump International Golf Links. Instead I am fighting for the benefit of Scotland.

“Every location in the United States with a magnificent coastline – nothing compared to Scotland – has successfully defeated these horrendous looking, noisy and inefficient structures.”