8 ms·

I remember seeing the windmills for the first time in person when I was in my teens, on a flight from Boston to Copanhagen. I saw another "field" of them as my

I remember seeing the windmills for the first time in person when I was in my teens, on a flight from Boston to Copanhagen. I saw another "field" of them as my boat left port in Denmark. They were incredible to look at, just mesmerizing. They were beautiful, gorgeous in more than just their form. That something so bold and elegant could create meaningful amounts of power blew my mind. I remembered reading about lakes and ponds in New Hampshire that had no persistent human contact but tested positive for mercury from coal plants. Looking at these windmills was like staring into a vision of the future. Looking at them, I had never felt so optimistic about technology before. When I got home I went on the internet to read about wind power and see if there were any initiatives in my home state or Massachusetts. The negativity I found in the papers was its own mind-boggle. Do you know what they complained about? The view.

scarmig 14y ago
I don't get it. It's easy to guess that "well, the rich of course are going to manipulate the political process to protect their privileged position, even if it means those less well off and society at large will be the worse for it." Which is plausible at first, considering who fossil fuels hurt and whom wind farms "hurt." But it's not like Europe doesn't have entrenched economic interests, and it's not like those entrenched interests wouldn't have captured the political process. What's so special about the USA that gives ridiculous outcomes?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- mjn 14y ago
  There are a lot of differences, but I think two economic factors help it in Denmark (ok, I ended up writing mostly about the 1st): 1. If you think of the country of Denmark itself as a large corporation of sorts, its goal in the international market is to go high-end. The workforce is too high-wage to compete on regular manufacturing, cheap worldwide food prices mean the traditionally important agriculture sector now contributes a mere 5% of GDP, and it doesn't have the oil of Norway. So it's the only choice really: to be a leader in high-skill services, R&D, and high-end manufacturing. [This paragraph is an aside:] This view underpins lots of stuff that goes on in both the governmental and industrial sectors. As one example, there is a goal that within 20 years, 100% of Danes will earn a college degree, and 50% (!) will go on to get a masters degree, in order to position the country's workforce as highly educated, almost like a 6-million-strong consulting shop. They're willing to pay for it, too: there is no tuition, and students receive a modest living stipend. The similarities to a company are surprisingly deep, e.g. the unemployment program is even run a lot like an HR department, viewing un/underemployed people quite literally as potential "human resources" who can be used to plug labor shortages elsewhere, with the right matchmaking and training. On the services side, it's been reasonably successful, though honestly in part due to good fortune in making the transition: Carlsberg and Maersk are huge parts of the Danish economy, despite the fact that actually brewing beer and building/sailing ships are long-gone as mainstays of the economy. They managed to transition into having Danes as the managerial class of global companies when the manufacturing jobs moved elsewhere. It's not hard to imagine an alternate-history scenario where Copenhagen ends up as a poor post-industrial city full of derelict shipyards, instead of a rich post-industrial city full of loft conversions in former shipyards. Wind energy has been a lynchpin of the R&D and high-end manufacturing part of the strategy for a while now, from both the public and private sides. Denmark's location makes wind a reasonably good choice among the various things you might want to pursue in the energy sector (I wouldn't recommend a solar-based strategy here). And so it's become not only big domestically, but a major export business. Denmark-based Vestas has long been the #1 worldwide wind-turbine manufacturer, one of the few global "#1s" in a country of 6 million. You can aso see it in the "branding strategy" of both the government (http://denmark.dk/en/green-living/wind-energy/ http://denmark.dk/en/green-living/wind-energy/) and the industrial sector (http://www.windpower.org/en/ http://www.windpower.org/en/). And it spills into other things, e.g. "smart grids" to manage the variable load of wind energy are now a big R&D initiative at the university I'm at, with hopes that Denmark will become a leader in smart-grid tech too. So what I'm getting at is: domestic wind farms are rather multi-purpose. They do serve a primary function of actually generating energy. But they also serve a secondary function of building up the wind-export sector, and another secondary function of building up a certain image that Denmark wants to project, of a 21st-century R&D and high-end manufacturing hub, and of generally being "ahead". 2. Many of the wind farms are organized as consumer cooperatives, so have broad-based ownership, which produces built-in supporters. For example, the farm offshore of the island of Amager (just east of Copenhagen) is co-owned 50% by the municipality, and 50% by a cooperative with 10,000 members.
nawitus 14y ago
While the view may be a rather weak argument, wind power doesn't make much sense. Nuclear power is just a better way to produce energy. It's cheap, stable and just as environmentally friendly. It's too bad that politics prevent it's usage, adoption and development in so many countries. There's very little research on thorium power, too, which would solve most of the remaing negative points about nuclear power.
- gnaffle 14y ago
  "Just as environmentally friendly"? Since when did Wind power require long term storage of waste? Nuclear power depends on public trust (which is reflected in politics). That trust was just about built up again after Chernobyl when Fukushima happened. Now we'll probably have to wait another 20-30 years (except in China and India, which as both actively pursuing nuclear energy).
  - nawitus 14y ago
    >"Just as environmentally friendly"? Since when did Wind power require long term storage of waste? Never claimed it did. However, the single property/factor of "does it require long term storage of waste" does not determine environmental friendliness, although it's certainly a factor. There are a multitude of factors that people base different weights on. Carbon emissions is a good starting point, and nuclear is even with wind on that one.
    - gnaffle 14y ago
      So, if wind energy doesn't create waste, doesn't require mining and enrichment and doesn't have a chance of causing a major environmental disaster, how can you claim nuclear energy is "just as environmentally friendly"?
      - mpyne 14y ago
        What fantasy world do you live in where the components (both structural and electrical) of a wind turbine require no mining? Either way though this whole discussion is just ridiculous. Nuclear isn't competing with wind, it's competing with fossil-fueled thermal generation. All of the wind energy that Denmark is producing per this article is less than 1/6th of a single Canadian nuclear power plant (Bruce N.G.S.).
Detrus 14y ago
They do complain about views and noise in Europe too. But with a functioning government their concerns are overruled by the majority who doesn't have a view of the coast. I love looking at windmills too but then I don't look and listen to them all day. As far as power generation I'm amazed the ground windmill approach is as popular as it is. It's not efficient. It has serious limitations. Seems like a craze. But then the incredibly inefficient coal plants were a craze too. Electric lights and vacuum cleaners, how did we live without them! We can make coal plants far more efficient. A 10% efficiency increase would be bigger than the renewable industry in the US. We can also make wind kites which make a lot more sense. Lets see if we bother.
- gngeal 14y ago
  "I love looking at windmills too but then I don't look and listen to them all day." Is looking at them significantly worse than looking at the car traffic on a major street in the rush hour? As far as the sound is concerned, I doubt that the effects are anything more than purely psychological. There are established hygienic limits for a reason.
  - droopyEyelids 14y ago
    Be careful to dismiss things as 'purely psychological'. Psychological disturbances affect people as much as physical disturbances, and in the end a psychological disturbance is a physical disturbance in the brain.
    - gngeal 14y ago
      Yes, but in that case, you go to your psychologist/psychiatrist/neurologist to take care of yourself, not to your local energy provider.
    - jchrisa 14y ago
      The aesthetic is the political...
  - Carlee 14y ago
moakleaf 14y ago
People are actually not super excited about windmills in Denmark either. Noise, vibrations, and view are the problems.
- mjn 14y ago
  As far as view goes, I actually really like the modern ones offshore. I don't like the older ones, which look like landscape clutter. For example the old Tehachapi wind farm in California (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tehachapi_wind_farm_3.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tehachapi_wind_farm_3.jpg) reminds me of an old oil field, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oil_wells_just_offshore_at_Summerland,_California,_c.1915.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oil_wells_just_offshore_at.... But as far as the new ones: I recently moved offices in Copenhagen, to a 5th-story office looking east towards the Øresund. I think the offshore wind farm there adds substantially to the view (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middelgrunden http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middelgrunden). It's especially nice on overcast, windy, gray days, when you can see the white turbines rotating in the fog. But it's nice on sunny days too, at least in my opinion. Here's a snapshot from my window: http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/598966_10100473049926079_1195961214_n.jpg http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/598966_1010047304... And if you get closer, e.g. at Amager Beach, it's even nicer (again imo). It's like a modernist kinetic sculpture or something, an aesthetically pleasing series of 20 massive but sleekly styled turbines in a row.
  - ashkav 14y ago
    isn't it funny that the first windmills are reminiscent of oil wells, and current solar projects (in the US) are large solar arrays, blending again with the existing large-scale infrastructure? maybe this similarity is lofty associated, but i find it interesting.
  - krschultz 14y ago
    The bigger ones seem to rotate slower which helps a lot aesthetically. I'm pretty sure the tip is still moving the same speed, but the RPM is lower.
- biehl 14y ago
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
drakaal 14y ago
Visit somewhere in California where a pristine mountain side with trees and red rock was just 10 years ago, and not it is nothing but wall of spinning white blades of bird killers. Wind is like water. You can't just slow it down with your turbines and expect no environmental impact. Putting them on the windward side of a mountain reduces the rain fall on the opposite side. Birds die in the blades. It isn't all rainbows and butterflies.
- to3m 14y ago
  As these things go, it's one of the more unobtrusive options. Compare it to, for example, an open cast coal mine. (It's even probably cheaper to knock down the turbines than it is to fill the pit back in.)
- ars 14y ago
  Cats kill FAR FAR FAR more birds than windmills do. If you actually cared about birds you would support cat kills (not just sterilize and release). But few people do.
  - adventured 14y ago
    To support this point (and this is just in the US): http://www.npr.org/2013/01/29/170588511/killer-kitties-cats-kill-billions-every-year http://www.npr.org/2013/01/29/170588511/killer-kitties-cats-... "Previous studies had suggested that cats kill about 500 million birds a year. Marra's group came up with something very different. "We estimate that cats kill somewhere between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds a year," Marra says. "For mammals, it's upward of about 15 billion." "Marra says based on those new figures, cat-caused mortality far exceeds deaths from other sources, like collisions with cars or wind turbines.
  - drakaal 14y ago
    How many Golden Eagles, Perigan Falcons, and Owls Do cats kill?
sliverstorm 14y ago
Do you know what they complained about? The view. You love technology. But not everybody does. Some people like to live in the city, some people like to live in the country. Some people like to keep technology from enveloping their entire lives. Is one viewpoint inherently more right than the other?

scarmig 14y ago

I don't get it. It's easy to guess that "well, the rich of course are going to manipulate the political process to protect their privileged position, even if it means those less well off and society at large will be the worse for it." Which is plausible at first, considering who fossil fuels hurt and whom wind farms "hurt." But it's not like Europe doesn't have entrenched economic interests, and it's not like those entrenched interests wouldn't have captured the political process. What's so special about the USA that gives ridiculous outcomes?

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
mjn 14y ago
There are a lot of differences, but I think two economic factors help it in Denmark (ok, I ended up writing mostly about the 1st): 1. If you think of the country of Denmark itself as a large corporation of sorts, its goal in the international market is to go high-end. The workforce is too high-wage to compete on regular manufacturing, cheap worldwide food prices mean the traditionally important agriculture sector now contributes a mere 5% of GDP, and it doesn't have the oil of Norway. So it's the only choice really: to be a leader in high-skill services, R&D, and high-end manufacturing. [This paragraph is an aside:] This view underpins lots of stuff that goes on in both the governmental and industrial sectors. As one example, there is a goal that within 20 years, 100% of Danes will earn a college degree, and 50% (!) will go on to get a masters degree, in order to position the country's workforce as highly educated, almost like a 6-million-strong consulting shop. They're willing to pay for it, too: there is no tuition, and students receive a modest living stipend. The similarities to a company are surprisingly deep, e.g. the unemployment program is even run a lot like an HR department, viewing un/underemployed people quite literally as potential "human resources" who can be used to plug labor shortages elsewhere, with the right matchmaking and training. On the services side, it's been reasonably successful, though honestly in part due to good fortune in making the transition: Carlsberg and Maersk are huge parts of the Danish economy, despite the fact that actually brewing beer and building/sailing ships are long-gone as mainstays of the economy. They managed to transition into having Danes as the managerial class of global companies when the manufacturing jobs moved elsewhere. It's not hard to imagine an alternate-history scenario where Copenhagen ends up as a poor post-industrial city full of derelict shipyards, instead of a rich post-industrial city full of loft conversions in former shipyards. Wind energy has been a lynchpin of the R&D and high-end manufacturing part of the strategy for a while now, from both the public and private sides. Denmark's location makes wind a reasonably good choice among the various things you might want to pursue in the energy sector (I wouldn't recommend a solar-based strategy here). And so it's become not only big domestically, but a major export business. Denmark-based Vestas has long been the #1 worldwide wind-turbine manufacturer, one of the few global "#1s" in a country of 6 million. You can aso see it in the "branding strategy" of both the government (http://denmark.dk/en/green-living/wind-energy/ http://denmark.dk/en/green-living/wind-energy/) and the industrial sector (http://www.windpower.org/en/ http://www.windpower.org/en/). And it spills into other things, e.g. "smart grids" to manage the variable load of wind energy are now a big R&D initiative at the university I'm at, with hopes that Denmark will become a leader in smart-grid tech too. So what I'm getting at is: domestic wind farms are rather multi-purpose. They do serve a primary function of actually generating energy. But they also serve a secondary function of building up the wind-export sector, and another secondary function of building up a certain image that Denmark wants to project, of a 21st-century R&D and high-end manufacturing hub, and of generally being "ahead". 2. Many of the wind farms are organized as consumer cooperatives, so have broad-based ownership, which produces built-in supporters. For example, the farm offshore of the island of Amager (just east of Copenhagen) is co-owned 50% by the municipality, and 50% by a cooperative with 10,000 members.

nawitus 14y ago

While the view may be a rather weak argument, wind power doesn't make much sense. Nuclear power is just a better way to produce energy. It's cheap, stable and just as environmentally friendly. It's too bad that politics prevent it's usage, adoption and development in so many countries. There's very little research on thorium power, too, which would solve most of the remaing negative points about nuclear power.

gnaffle 14y ago
"Just as environmentally friendly"? Since when did Wind power require long term storage of waste? Nuclear power depends on public trust (which is reflected in politics). That trust was just about built up again after Chernobyl when Fukushima happened. Now we'll probably have to wait another 20-30 years (except in China and India, which as both actively pursuing nuclear energy).
- nawitus 14y ago
  >"Just as environmentally friendly"? Since when did Wind power require long term storage of waste? Never claimed it did. However, the single property/factor of "does it require long term storage of waste" does not determine environmental friendliness, although it's certainly a factor. There are a multitude of factors that people base different weights on. Carbon emissions is a good starting point, and nuclear is even with wind on that one.
  - gnaffle 14y ago
    So, if wind energy doesn't create waste, doesn't require mining and enrichment and doesn't have a chance of causing a major environmental disaster, how can you claim nuclear energy is "just as environmentally friendly"?
    - mpyne 14y ago
      What fantasy world do you live in where the components (both structural and electrical) of a wind turbine require no mining? Either way though this whole discussion is just ridiculous. Nuclear isn't competing with wind, it's competing with fossil-fueled thermal generation. All of the wind energy that Denmark is producing per this article is less than 1/6th of a single Canadian nuclear power plant (Bruce N.G.S.).

Detrus 14y ago

They do complain about views and noise in Europe too. But with a functioning government their concerns are overruled by the majority who doesn't have a view of the coast. I love looking at windmills too but then I don't look and listen to them all day. As far as power generation I'm amazed the ground windmill approach is as popular as it is. It's not efficient. It has serious limitations. Seems like a craze. But then the incredibly inefficient coal plants were a craze too. Electric lights and vacuum cleaners, how did we live without them! We can make coal plants far more efficient. A 10% efficiency increase would be bigger than the renewable industry in the US. We can also make wind kites which make a lot more sense. Lets see if we bother.

gngeal 14y ago
"I love looking at windmills too but then I don't look and listen to them all day." Is looking at them significantly worse than looking at the car traffic on a major street in the rush hour? As far as the sound is concerned, I doubt that the effects are anything more than purely psychological. There are established hygienic limits for a reason.
- droopyEyelids 14y ago
  Be careful to dismiss things as 'purely psychological'. Psychological disturbances affect people as much as physical disturbances, and in the end a psychological disturbance is a physical disturbance in the brain.
  - gngeal 14y ago
    Yes, but in that case, you go to your psychologist/psychiatrist/neurologist to take care of yourself, not to your local energy provider.
  - jchrisa 14y ago
    The aesthetic is the political...
- Carlee 14y ago

moakleaf 14y ago

People are actually not super excited about windmills in Denmark either. Noise, vibrations, and view are the problems.

mjn 14y ago
As far as view goes, I actually really like the modern ones offshore. I don't like the older ones, which look like landscape clutter. For example the old Tehachapi wind farm in California (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tehachapi_wind_farm_3.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tehachapi_wind_farm_3.jpg) reminds me of an old oil field, like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oil_wells_just_offshore_at_Summerland,_California,_c.1915.jpg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Oil_wells_just_offshore_at.... But as far as the new ones: I recently moved offices in Copenhagen, to a 5th-story office looking east towards the Øresund. I think the offshore wind farm there adds substantially to the view (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middelgrunden http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middelgrunden). It's especially nice on overcast, windy, gray days, when you can see the white turbines rotating in the fog. But it's nice on sunny days too, at least in my opinion. Here's a snapshot from my window: http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/598966_10100473049926079_1195961214_n.jpg http://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-snc7/598966_1010047304... And if you get closer, e.g. at Amager Beach, it's even nicer (again imo). It's like a modernist kinetic sculpture or something, an aesthetically pleasing series of 20 massive but sleekly styled turbines in a row.
- ashkav 14y ago
  isn't it funny that the first windmills are reminiscent of oil wells, and current solar projects (in the US) are large solar arrays, blending again with the existing large-scale infrastructure? maybe this similarity is lofty associated, but i find it interesting.
- krschultz 14y ago
  The bigger ones seem to rotate slower which helps a lot aesthetically. I'm pretty sure the tip is still moving the same speed, but the RPM is lower.
biehl 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

drakaal 14y ago

Visit somewhere in California where a pristine mountain side with trees and red rock was just 10 years ago, and not it is nothing but wall of spinning white blades of bird killers. Wind is like water. You can't just slow it down with your turbines and expect no environmental impact. Putting them on the windward side of a mountain reduces the rain fall on the opposite side. Birds die in the blades. It isn't all rainbows and butterflies.

to3m 14y ago
As these things go, it's one of the more unobtrusive options. Compare it to, for example, an open cast coal mine. (It's even probably cheaper to knock down the turbines than it is to fill the pit back in.)
ars 14y ago
Cats kill FAR FAR FAR more birds than windmills do. If you actually cared about birds you would support cat kills (not just sterilize and release). But few people do.
- adventured 14y ago
  To support this point (and this is just in the US): http://www.npr.org/2013/01/29/170588511/killer-kitties-cats-kill-billions-every-year http://www.npr.org/2013/01/29/170588511/killer-kitties-cats-... "Previous studies had suggested that cats kill about 500 million birds a year. Marra's group came up with something very different. "We estimate that cats kill somewhere between 1.4 and 3.7 billion birds a year," Marra says. "For mammals, it's upward of about 15 billion." "Marra says based on those new figures, cat-caused mortality far exceeds deaths from other sources, like collisions with cars or wind turbines.
- drakaal 14y ago
  How many Golden Eagles, Perigan Falcons, and Owls Do cats kill?

sliverstorm 14y ago

Do you know what they complained about? The view. You love technology. But not everybody does. Some people like to live in the city, some people like to live in the country. Some people like to keep technology from enveloping their entire lives. Is one viewpoint inherently more right than the other?