>Depending on who you listen to..

…the new wind turbines will be the tallest man-made structure ever conceived, they’ll cast their evil shadows for kilometres across the pristine countryside and if the constant thwapp-thwapp-thwapp of the rotating blades doesn’t drive us all gaga, then the stroboscopic effect of their moving shadow every few seconds will

or

…you’ll hardly notice them. tucked away next to the existing masts in the fields and YOU DON”T ALL WANT TO DIE FROM THE EFFECTS OF GLOBAL WARMING, DO YOU?

Pretty much sums up the situation in the village at the moment.

The mayor (and local Member of Parliament) Ute Granold wants to limit the height of the new turbine masts to the current 100 metres

Juwi – the renewable energy outfit managing the project – claims a fivefold increase in generating power per unit by increasing the height by 50% and that the mayor knew about the proposed height increase right from the start of the (18 month) planning process and didn’t put in her veto until a few weeks ago.

Things could get quite nasty…

Facts are that the masts will provide power for 9000 people, generate €20,000 a year in taxes for the village, save 7800 tons of CO2 emissions annually and have an energy amortisation period (the length of time it takes to balance the energy that was used in producing the units) of about 6 months.

Sounds pretty good to me…

22 Jan This entry was published on 22 January, 2008 at 06:17. It’s filed under Mainz, Politics, Region and tagged Klein-Winternheim. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.