Wind turbines are touted as “supporting renewable energy”, but they:cause serious environmental damage in their manufacture, use and disposalare a visual blight on the landscape or seascapecause serious health problems to humans and death to wildlifeexploit poorer countries, andare economically unsustainableThe plan to put 105 turbines off the Illawarra coast, creating one of the largest wind farms in the world, would not only be extreme visual pollution but would cause many well- documented problems that are kept quiet in the relentless push for green power. We should not be following other countries down the path of economic and environmental destruction that they have taken over the past decades to their detriment. We need to learn from history to avoid repeating these mistakes. The facts are:1. The energy used to make wind generators is far more than they will produce in their lifetime.2. It is a myth that wind turbines can supply electricity 24/7, as the disasters in Germany and Scandinavia have recently shown, not only weakening their economies, but leaving tens of thousands of homes and businesses without power for weeks. Germany is now demolishing wind turbines and sending the massive waste to Africa. In the 2020-21 European winter, Germany’s 30 000 wind turbines failed, and power supply had to be rescued by Polish fossil fuels and French nuclear power.3. Although over $130 million per annum has been spent in the USA on wind and solar power for decades, this generates less than 3% of electricity needed for homes and businesses. Worldwide, over $5 billion per annum has been spent on windfarms, most of which are not delivering the power that was claimed or expected.4. Sulphur hexafluoride is used to make wind turbines. It is 25 000 times more potent than carbon dioxide and stays in the atmosphere for up to a thousand years, compared to CO2 at 5-7 years. Yet, wind energy is supposed to be an answer to increasing carbon emissions, and the long-term effects of sulphur hexafluoride are at present unknown. (See also point 13, below).5. In Australia, the A.C.T. claims it is powered by 100% renewables, but this is blatantly misleading. The A.C.T. doesn’t generate its own power but sources over 90% of its electricity from the NSW grid supplied by coal-fired power stations, and the other 10% from Victoria and South Australia.6. Norway is seeing more and more grass-roots protests against offshore wind turbines, having spent millions on wind projects that delivered little.7. Each wind turbine needs an average of 500 cubic metres of concrete and 45 tonnes of reinforcing steel in its base, and the blades require chemicals that cause serious health problems for both humans and animals - in the air, water and soil - mined using child labour in Africa, Asia and South America.8. Wind turbines in NSW (Goulburn, Crookwell, etc.) have forced families, who have lived on farmsthere for generations, to leave due to the creation of infrasound (low frequency sound below human hearing level) as well as audible humming noises, responsible for epilepsy, inner ear damage, sleep deprivation, headaches and rises in cortisol (a stress hormone)9. Wind factories, whether on land or at sea, take up far more space than other forms of power generation. The offshore Germini wind farm in the Netherlands occupies 68 square km of water, yet produces only 2.6 billion kWh of electricity per annum (and that only intermittently), compared with the Borsella nuclear plant which produces 570 times more electricity per unit of space (and 24 hours a day, 7 days a week).10. Globally, hundreds of wind turbines have exploded into balls of flame and toxic smoke, causing tonnes of burning oil to fall onto land and sea, in more than 17 countries. In Australia, at least four bushfires (Ten Mile Creek, W.A.; Millicent, S.A.; Port Lincoln, S.A.; and Starfish Hill, S.A.) have been started by wind turbine fires.11. Despite the preposterous claim that wind turbines are environmentally friendly, they are constantly killing apex predators like eagles, hawks, kites and falcons, as well as bats, chopped up by the blades that can spin at over 300 km/h. In just six weeks, 28 birds were killed by turbines in the North Dakota oil fields. They have now killed 3.5 million birds and bats across the USA alone, increasing the populations of mosquitoes and crop-eating insects normally controlled by bats. The Audubon Society states that “Wind turbines kill an average of 140 000 – 328 000 birds each year in North America, making it the most threatening form of green energy”. What would offshore windmills do to our sea eagles and migratory sea birds in the Kiama and Gerringong area?12. Turbine blades (each often over 60m long, and the latest ones over 90m long) last from 10 to 20 years and then become landfill. The blades are not recyclable, and an estimated 43 million tonnes of blade waste will be added to landfill sites in less than a decade . In just 6 months (Sept.2019 – March 2020), over 1 100 turbine blades were dumped in Wyoming in the Rocky Mountains, costing the taxpayer $200 000 per blade, to decommission, transport and dump. There are now over 25 000 derelict, non-functioning wind turbines (i.e., over 75 000 blades) waiting to be dismantled and dumped, just in the USA. Canada’s expensive wind farm disaster has now been abandoned, and replaced by plans for 8 small modular nuclear reactors to supply the country with the electricity that wind turbines could not.13. These turbine blades are made from a toxic mixture of fibreglass, epoxy resin, polyvinylchloride, polyethylene terephthalate, polyurethane and other chemicals. They do not decompose in landfill and cannot be recycled, so they will pollute aquifers and water supplies for centuries. The wind industry claims a 20-year average life for each blade, but the actual figures show an average life of 10-11 years, as they commonly fail (e.g., South Australia’s Hallet 1 Brown Hill wind farm, where every one of its 45 wind turbines failed in the first year of operation, requiring complete replacement at taxpayers’ expense). Its owner, AGL, probably also didn’t tell the local community that both the blades and concrete bases contain thechemical bisphenol A – banned in both the EU and Canada for its toxicity – and that it leaches from the concrete bases.14. Currently, 81% of materials to make wind turbines come from China and Chinese-controlled operations in Africa, Asia and Latin America where there is little regard for fair wages, worker safety, wildlife preservation and land rehabilitation. It is called wind energy’s “dirty little secret”. Per megawatt of power, wind turbines need 200 times more raw materials than gas turbines, and these materials come from destructive exploitation of people in impoverished countries. Demand for rare earth elements will rise by between 300% to 1000% to meet the demands of the Paris Accord for net zero emissions, according to the International Energy Agency. China gets most of these minerals from the Bayan Obo Mine in inner Mongolia where ithas left a huge toxic, radioactive waste pile that has already given the locals cancers and fatalrespiratory problems.15. Nowhere in the world have wind turbines given economic value for money. Over 15 countries have stopped establishing wind farms in the past decade due to their economic unsustainability and underperformance. If the USA were to generate all its electricity from wind farms, it would need an area the size of Italy for the turbines, and ten times the quantity of materials to deliver the same amount of electricity as currently supplied by coal and gas. Renewables companies are in the business of making money, not saving the environment. The wind turbine industry has only ever survived on generous government subsidies, paid for by the taxpayer, even as power prices continue to rise, not lessen. Warren Buffet, world-renowned international investmentadvisor, said, of wind farms: “They don’t make sense without the tax credit”. In 1983, the American Wind Industry Association claimed that they would be “competitive and self- supporting” within a decade. Five decades later, they still aren’t, and neither is wind farming viable anywhere else in the world.16. France has fared better than most of Europe because 71% of its energy comes from nuclear plants, and yet it still established the visual pollution of forests of wind turbines through what used to be the scenic vineyards of Burgundy and the picturesque mediaeval town of Carcassonne, with NO reduction of carbon dioxide emissions at all, only a declining tourist industry. California, which had the world’s fifth largest economy, invested heavily in wind farms decades ago, but now has to rely on diesel generators to keep up electricity supply amidst the frequent collapse of the grid and wildfires caused by exploding wind turbines. The state was forced, in 2020, to build five new gas-fired power stations to make up the shortfall. It now hasthe USA’s highest poverty rate, and thousands of residents, every day, are left without power which has to be rationed. Texans have fared no better, having built wind farms to supply 25% of the state’s power needs, but leaving 5 million Texans without power for 4 days in February 2021, when 98% of its green energy failed. Two hundred Texans, the poor and vulnerable, died from this failure.17. Japan spent $580 million on offshore wind farms but has now scrapped the whole project due to its failure to produce enough electricity, while Rhode Island’s six-turbine offshore wind project couldn’t even produce one third of the power it claimed. Decommission costs are over $2 billion. Yet, the Biden administration is planning 10 000 offshore wind turbines, despite an astronomical cost that keeps rising, and growing objections from environmental groups, the US Navy, telecommunications companies, tourism groups and the fishing industry. And the turbines will need to be manufactured in China.18. In 2007, the UK government claimed that the whole country would be powered by wind turbines by 2020. It invested heavily in wind companies to make it happen. It was an abject failure, and the UK taxpayers have had to fork out over £630 million in the last decade to pay these contracted companies NOT to generate electricity. A major G20 economy has been reduced to frequent blackouts and a return to fossil fuels, as well as being forced to import goods it once produced, while households and businesses are still forced to pay green levies on their intermittent electricity supply. British Steel is now owned by China.19. Australia has successfully used wind power for a long time, pumping water and charging lead-acid batteries in the outback – but all on a very small scale. It just doesn’t work on an industrial scale, even with help from solar. The Federal Government’s 2020 Renewable Energy Target has caused it to launch a plan to litter the country with forests of wind turbines, each one being heavily subsidised by renewable energy certificates worth between $280 000 and $350 000 apiece, forcing all of us to pay 3-4 times as much for electricity, and coming from Chinese-made windmills, sold back to us from our own coal, gas and iron ore. The Hazelwood brown coal generator in Victoria produced more electricity than all the Australian renewables combined, and provided power 24/7, until it was shut down by ill-advised Green activism to prop up a wind- generated system that fails frequently. The Horns dale Power Reserve (South Australia’s 150MW Tesla battery) is not even Australian-owned. It is owned and operated by French energy company Neoen, taking away even more Australian jobs. The S.A. Government even dynamited its coal-fired power stations to make sure that coal could not be used again for electricity generation. When the Tesla battery failed, the S.A. Government had to spend $100 million on diesel generators just to keep the lights on, and sold its gas and uranium to China while refusing to use either in South Australia. All this despite the fact that this battery, when it does work, can supply South Australia with only 4 minutes of electricity. Overall, in S.A., CO2 emissions went up, not down, due to the failure of the renewables, as the state had to revert to diesel once more; and South Australia now also has the highest unemployment rate in the country.20. Tasmania, Australia’s smallest and “greenest” state, proposed to build massive wind turbines, each 240m tall, through its Central Highlands between Hobart and Launceston … until a Parliamentary Select Committee found it would cost $1.6 billion (not the claimed $50 million), kill a lot of wildlife including wedge-tail eagles, and destroy Tasmanian Devil habitats. Even Bob Brown, former senator and founder of the Greens Party, is opposed to wind farms [as he stated on the ABC’s 7.30 Report and in the Hobart Mercury, 8 th July 2019] on the grounds of visual pollution, killing of birds, destruction of wilderness areas for transmission lines and benefitting big business at the expense of both the public and the environment.As residents and taxpayers of the Illawarra, as people who love our environment and who want security for the next generations, and as people with a conscience, we must oppose the South Pacific Offshore Wind Project at all levels of government.Tony Butz, Gerringong, NSW 2534 February 2023
