A
recent announcement that around 700 windmills will be set up 10
nautical miles from the shore has caused a major stir in beach towns
such as Noordwijk, Katwijk, Wassenaar and Zandvoort. The four mayors
of the towns have rolled up their sleeves to make a point towards
Minister Henk Kamp. Fear of losing an 'endless seascape' has caused
this uproar. The Don Quixotes of the 21st century are taking a stand.
JOEP DERKSEN reports.
Mayors
in the ‘land of windmills’ have teamed up to fight against...
windmills. The start of the windmill clash was on 23 December 2010.
At that time, the Dutch government announced in the Staatscourant
(state newspaper) that Eneco would be allowed to set up a windmill
project called 'Luchterduinen'. Municipalities are allowed to object
to this decision, but because this news was announced two days before
Christmas apparently not one single civil servant of the coastal
towns and villages took the time to read through the Staatscourant.
And after a few weeks, the time to object had passed.
Currently,
platforms are built in the North Sea at 12 nautical miles (19.3
kilometres) from the coast. These windmills should provide power to
150,000 households. This development has apparently led the Dutch
government to undertake more initiatives regarding the use of
windmills. The
sea is an excellent location to place these 200-meters-high
windmills. There should be no angry civilians complaining about the
noise, it was thought. Yet, the NIMBY (“Not In My Back Yard”)
mentality is still alive. The villages and cities near the coast are
strongly opposed to the arrival of an additional 700 or so windmills
even closer to shore, at 10 nautical miles (18.5 kilometres).
An
action group (what else?) was set up and more than 17,000 signatures
against the windmills were collected via the website
www.petities24.com/verzetwindmolens.
Even the mayors of four beach villages took a political stand and
went to the beach of Noordwijk. As a public statement they signed
picture postcards to send them over to the responsible minister, Henk
Kamp. With these postcards they tried to convince the minister to
reconsider his decision to have the windmills placed at a distance of
18 kilometres from the coast. There is fear that the number of
tourists will dwindle, because they can't see the sun sink into the
endless sea anymore.
And
why are 17,000 people so afraid of windmills? A green way of turning
wind into electrical power? Okay, it is true that these windmills
suck up a few billion euros in government funding. But at this
moment, there's no real alternative in green energy. There are some
interesting developments, such as tidal energy. But these are still
in an experimental phase. Later
this year five turbines will start operating between the piers of the
Oosterscheldedam, thus creating energy. These turbines are sort of
windmills under water. The Dutch company Tocardo developed the
turbines and they will supply enough power for over 1,000 households.
It
is an interesting alternative, but comes too late to make sure that
the Netherlands will reach its ultimate goal in 2020. In that year,
14 per cent of all energy usage should come from renewable sources.
In 2013, this number was only 4.5 per cent. For the next few years,
the government wants 700 windmills to be built at
sea, creating about 2 per cent of the total electricity use in the
Netherlands.
But
these numbers cannot convince the mayors of the coastal areas to give
in to the proposal. They continue their fight against the windmills.
At least where it concerns their own back yard, or should we say
‘back water’. Jos Wienen, the mayor of Katwijk, states, “We are
in favour of windmills, but we want to have them placed in IJmuiden
Ver (at 23 nautical miles from the Dutch coast). We don't want to
have a fence of windmills along the coast. Then we will have an
industrial landscape near the beach. Place these windmills a little
further away; then you can also set up more of these windmills.”
His
colleague, Noordwijk mayor Jan Rijpstra, totally agrees. “At
IJmuiden Ver, more than three times as many windmills can be placed,
with a total of 6,000 megawatt. And realising this alternative costs
just a little more: only 70 euro cents per household per year
(equivalent to 5.3 million euros). Place these windmills at IJmuiden
Ver and as a nation we can make a giant leap towards renewable
energy!'
However,
Kamp is not convinced. He has written in a letter to Parliament that
IJmuiden Ver is not a realistic alternative. He prefers wind regions
offshore just before the coast of the provinces Noord-Holland and
Zuid-Holland. According to Kamp, IJmuiden Ver is too expensive
compared to the current windmill plans. The Dutch government has
started a procedure to appoint two strips in front of the Dutch coast
for the arrival of the windmills.
And
what do the tourists think? The Holland Times spoke with some German
visitors to Noordwijk and, basically, they don't care whether the
windmills will be placed 10 miles from the shore or not. “Of course
we will still come to Noordwijk when the windmills have been placed.
We also have windmills near our beaches in Germany,” one tourist
said.
Still,
the mayors persist in their resistance to the arrival of the
windmills. Wienen says, “We have to stand up against this threat of
the arrival of 700 windmills near our beaches. The time has come to
speak up. It is now or never. The experience of the endlessness of
the sea is at stake.”
(This article was written for The Holland Times).
