11 FEBRUARY 2004

Mr Alan Moore, Mr Chris Shears, Mr Rob Hastings and Mr Alan Mortimer

  Q180  Lord Turnberg: I would like to come to a point you talked about in your memorandum about the obligations of operators and regulators. Do you agree that the primary obligation of operators and regulators must be to ensure safe and secure power supply and the suggestion that technologies, particular technologies, should be the primary obligation should be secondary to that? Is that not the case?

  Mr Moore: As someone who has worked in the electricity generating industry for 37 years I would agree that safe and secure supplies are, and always will be, the prime concern of all of us.

  Q181  Lord Turnberg: I thought you might.

  Mr Moore: Let us not read into that that what we are representing here is necessarily something that works to our detriment. Wind power itself brings a number of advantages in terms of security, both in terms of being an embedded distributed generation system that can supply local networks, and clearly whilst the wind does not blow all the time it does not cost anything and, therefore, is not subject to price variations and it certainly is not subject to problems with importing fuels from abroad. Yes, we are intermittent but we bring some advantage to that security as well.

  Q182  Lord Turnberg: I want to come to this intermittency business because if you do have a primary role to guarantee supply how do you get round the intermittency issue?

  Mr Moore: I do not think "get round" is necessarily the right term. The intermittency of wind is a fact of life but system operators will tell us quite rightly that that does not necessarily mean that it is an enormous problem. There are other factors in the system which in terms of the contribution that wind is making today are having much greater effects in terms of variability on the system. Yes, as the penetration of wind increases the way that the system operator has to operate the system will have to change to accommodate that. I think in one of the questions we had prior notice of, you acknowledged David Milborrow's contribution to this in terms of the natural reserve where he said that for a ten per cent contribution from wind we would need reserves from thermal plant of about 750 megawatts which is not large, it is just over one large coal fired generator. One of the questions you asked was what would happen if it got to 20 per cent. I have spoken to David and, in fact, he has published a paper which gives us the figure for a 20 per cent penetration of wind and that is in the range of two to three gigawatts. That two to three gigawatts could well be coal fired plant which is unable to operate at a higher load factor because of its emissions and the LCPD regulations, but it would be perfectly acceptable within those regulations to operate at a lower load factor, which is what you require in order to provide a reserve. In fact, oil fired power stations, I am sure you are aware, are fulfilling that role right now and run for a relatively few hours a year but provide reserve for the intermittency of other technologies. When a large nuclear power station drops off, as they have a tendency to, that is a much bigger shock to the system than we are ever likely to produce from wind.

  Q183  Lord Turnberg: You see the intermittency problem being obviated by conventional carbon fuel?

  Mr Moore: By thermal plant, yes.

  Mr Shears: It is important to make the point that it is not a substitution issue. For example, for ten per cent of wind on the grid you take away almost ten per cent, apart from this few hundred megawatts we are talking about which is required from conventional plant, so we are not having to keep all of that plant in operation. The one statistic I have here is that to get to eight gigawatts of wind, which is our industry thoughts for 2010 perhaps, would require 300 to 500 megawatts of conventional plant in the system. The grid is a very complicated animal, as you will appreciate. It is a question of being fit for purpose. The Dinorwig pump hydro scheme operates at about a two per cent load factor because it serves a specific purpose on the grid to deal with those very high peaks in demand and similarly we can be incorporated into that complex mechanism.

  Q184  Baroness Perry of Southwark: I want to turn to what some of the critics of wind energy have thrown out. First of all, I am sure you will have seen the report in the Sunday Telegraph saying there were certain deleterious health effects from wind farms. What is your response to that report and are you undertaking any research in that area?

  Mr Moore: I should answer that since the article in the Telegraph, which I think came originally from the Western Morning News, referred to a wind farm that I own. The study that was done on a Cornish wind farm was of very few people and we sought from the author of the newspaper article, because that is what it is, it is not a serious piece of research, to find out the basis of the results and we have not been able to do that.

  Q185  Baroness Perry of Southwark: You mean the author has not responded to you or you have not been able to find him?

  Mr Moore: The response has been that she has given her evidence to the local newspaper and that is sufficient.

  Q186  Lord Winston: What is claimed? Dizziness?

  Mr Moore: Dizziness, sleeplessness, a whole range of things.

  Mr Shears: Headaches.

  Mr Moore: Those sorts of things. The author has then linked the results of this survey to what is called infrasound, very low frequency sound. The basis for that link is certainly unclear.

  Q187  Baroness Perry of Southwark: I have not seen the article. Can you give us an idea of the numbers that she is claiming are affected?

  Mr Moore: Our understanding is she spoke to 14 people living around the wind farm.

  Q188  Baroness Perry of Southwark: Right. Can we go on from that then, do you think?

  Mr Moore: Regarding infrasound, low frequency sound, in some circumstances that can cause problems but there are many tens of thousands of wind turbines around the world and this is the first time the issue has arisen. There was a study done, my colleagues remind me.

  Mr Shears: A 1997 ETSU study, a DTI sponsored study undertaken to look at this issue. That concluded that it is difficult to measure but levels ten times below the most stringent international health standards was the conclusion. There is a context issue here. We have got 50,000 turbines operating globally and this issue has cropped up in one or two small instances. The industry is trying to get to the bottom of those studies, as we have heard, and will do a thorough review, but it is within that context.

  Q189  Baroness Perry of Southwark: Do you have any thoughts on commissioning research or doing it yourselves?

  Mr Moore: At the moment there is very little to do a study on but if there is some real evidence produced from a reputable source then clearly we will work with them and do a study if necessary.

  Q190  Baroness Perry of Southwark: Presumably some people do have ultra sensitivity to sound and there is a huge variation.

  Mr Moore: I am not a doctor but—

  Chairman: We have a doctor here.

  Q191  Lord Winston: I am just wondering whether you consulted the National Radiation Protection Board who looked at the power lines. There have been a number of vague issues with public health risks of power lines which have not been substantiated and I wonder if this is the same kind of problem.

  Mr Moore: I am reasonably familiar with the power line studies, but that is to do with electromagnetic radiation rather than noise.

  Q192  Lord Winston: Sometimes you do have power lines at wind farms.

  Mr Moore: But at relatively low voltages.

  Q193  Baroness Perry of Southwark: The article was claming it was sound.

  Mr Shears: Low frequency sound going through the ground effectively.

  Q194  Lord Winston: I do not think anyone is suggesting there is a serious risk, it is whether or not it is the same kind of problem in people's minds.

  Mr Moore: What I would say is we are not dismissing it. If some serious evidence could be produced then we would be very happy to join in a survey and even initiate it.

  Q195  Baroness Perry of Southwark: The second on the list is the bird hazard. People are claiming there is a hazard to bird life.

  Mr Shears: Yes. This is an issue the industry takes very seriously. The fact that we now have over 80 wind farms operating in the UK means that a lot of studies have been done and there are very small bird strike issues in any of them. Even the RSPB acknowledge that the issue is not bird strike as such, it is more the scarecrow effect, if you like, the possible disturbance of breeding birds. That is where the debate is rather than bird strike. It is a very emotive issue and if there is a strike it tends to get publicity. The particular example recently was one from Wales with a Red Kite. A lot of this has come from the two examples internationally where there have been problems. One was the Altamont Pass turbines, 6,500 of them in California, which are very old, very close together lattice towers. The raptors tend to nest in the towers, perch on them, and occasionally fly through and get clobbered unfortunately. As I understand it, even in that situation there are several hundred killed every year, which tends to show in terms of the significance and impact on the population, which I suppose is the most important thing overall, that there is not a significant issue even in that extreme situation. We clearly do not want that to happen in the UK and we do a lot of consultation with RSPB, English Nature and the like very early on in designing the projects. I think overall the projects which have been built have been very well placed. There is a lot more potential as long as we avoid key migratory routes and SSSIs designated for bird issues and these kinds of things. There is an awful lot of work that goes into the siting of projects.

  Q196  Baroness Perry of Southwark: There is, of course, a more general criticism which is the visual impact on the landscape of the design. I am sure you have thought a great deal about that.

  Mr Shears: Yes, you are dead right, it is the most important issue for us. It is probably the one issue that as an industry we cannot design away, if you like. We can deal with noise, we can deal with bird issues and various other things, but the visual impact of turbines is an intrinsic part of what they are and basic physics will not dictate otherwise. We have to be careful about how we design projects. I suppose the big picture is that a lot of public attitude studies have been done by the industry, but more importantly by Government and independent bodies, and without fault they always show 80-90 per cent support for the technology. Clearly there are some who are opposed and they do tend to make their voice heard, quite rightly, as they should. It is against that background that we have to be careful about where we put them. Clearly there are some very treasured landscapes and the public do not want to see too much change, but we should bear in mind that the landscape has been changing forever and in the last 30 or 40 years we have become very preservationist in some ways about our landscapes. They are an ever changing thing and I think we need to bear that in mind against the backdrop that we do not need to cover the whole of the UK with wind turbines in order to achieve the penetrations that we need to, say up to 20 per cent. It is a question of balancing and spreading them around the whole of the UK.

  Q197  Baroness Perry of Southwark: There is quite a bit of NIMBYism about it anyway.

  Mr Shears: I cannot say I have a particular problem with NIMBYism, if it is right next to you then you are going to fight your corner. I think it is for the planning system and the developers to address those issues and come to the right compromise.

  Q198  Baroness Perry of Southwark: Briefly, and finally, your own memorandum refers to some of the difficulties with regard to aviation—objections from the MoD to development within Tactical Training Areas, and from civil and military aviation stakeholders to development in the "line of sight" of radar and so on. Have there been any developments or progress made?

  Mr Shears: I guess a cautious yes is my answer to that. There has been some progress. We have the Aviation Steering Group which has been operational now for a couple of years, which has 30 people sitting around a table, so nothing is going to happen that quickly I guess, but there has been some progress made through that. For example, on the issue of low flying areas, just last week at that meeting the MoD did say that they were undertaking a review of the Southern Scotland low fly zone to see what more could be accommodated. They have already released the biggest project onshore in the UK in our sector, 150 megawatts or thereabouts, just recently. We are encouraged by the MoD's progress as of late. Having said that, it is still taking them six months to respond to an inquiry "Is this area acceptable" and they are still objecting to every other project. We still think there is an awful long way to go. Some of that is technical but we believe a lot of it is institutional and about getting it up the order of priorities. We have got some evidence that this is beginning to occur and some extra resources are being brought to bear. On the civil aviation side, which is in many areas equally as big an issue which is stalling an awful lot of projects, we have no dispute that if a turbine is in line of sight with the radar, you may well see a twinkling on the radar screen. The question then becomes how significant is that in terms of the operational capabilities of that radar. There are many thousands of turbines operating in Europe very successfully around projects.

  Q199  Lord Winston: The impression we got last week from the Met Office from a visit in Exeter was that with regard to Doppler radar—which they use of course—this was a serious problem.

  Mr Shears: It is a serious issue and I think as an industry we have moved forward in our understanding from the simple "Well, it is a wind turbine, it is not an aeroplane, that cannot really be an issue" to the fact that they are moving objects and there are issues to be addressed. I think where we are struggling at the moment is to get more enthusiasm, particularly from the civil side now because they are a disparate bunch. With privatisation of National Air Traffic Services these days, to get funding for them to do bits of work is difficult and so on and so forth. So, again, it is getting the profile raised in order to come up with mitigation measures. There are possible solutions out there which the BWEA are encouraging which are software fixes, filtering fixes which can be added to radars which effectively process out the wind turbine returns. Now there is still a way to go in proving those sorts of technologies, and they are not cheap, so we have been pushing very strongly that it should be a two pronged attack. One is to look at those sorts of technical issues but also then look at the operational issues and see what compromises can be reached in terms of the day-to-day operations as well.