Bird-spotters convert to wind power

Turbine turned on at RSPB showcase wildlife centre

The new wind turbine at Rainham Marshes could have special significance in the story of UK renewables. It’s nothing unusual in technical terms, nor in scale – it’s only a little 15kW job, just enough to help power a visitor centre. The point is that it’s a flagship visitor centre of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB). As such, it’s symbolically signalling that bird protection and wind power don’t belong in opposing camps.

Anti-turbine campaigners tend to make great play of the ‘bird kill’ card, citing the RSPB’s all-too-frequent objections to wind farms in the past. The Rainham turbine could do more to put this in perspective than any number of carefully weighed RSPB statements about case-by-case evaluation.

What we’re really witnessing is a change in emphasis – birders will still argue for sensitive siting, but they’re swinging their weight behind the common cause of combating climate change. Hence the RSPB’s April study of the case for wind power, which urges the Government to press ahead with more land-based wind farms while proposing a wildlife sensitivity map to point developers in the right direction.

Reinforcing the point, RSPB’s John Clare cries “hooray for the [London] Array”, now that the 175-turbine wind scheme in the Thames Estuary is back on track, thanks to funding from DONG Energy, Masdar and E.ON. Far from denouncing it as a threat to a colony of redthroated divers, he praises the agreement to phase the development in order to minimise disruption for the birds. “We badly need schemes like the London Array,” he says. “Above all, we need them to show how we can have clean power and wildlife. There has to be a world left worth saving, after all.” – Roger East

15 July 2009

Roger East