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Online German business daily Handelsblatt here reported last month that leading German energy expert Jens Koeppen of Angela Merkel’s CDU party is calling for “drastic” permitting rules when it comes to installing wind turbines.

Wind turbine towers over German landscape. Photo: P Gosselin

The proposed rules would make a number of proposed wind projects impossible.

Currently a work group that is focused on acceptance and made up of members from the coalition parties is trying to figure out a way to get around the rapidly growing protests against more wind turbines, whose erection are deforesting and industrializing large swaths of Germany’s idyllic landscape.

Traditional environmentalists and conservationists are livid over the environmental destruction and health risks posed by wind parks.

Protests have become formidable, and as reported yesterday here, Germany’s expansion of wind energy has literally ground to a halt as a result and has thus angered climate protection alarmists and Big Wind lobbyists.

The Handelsblatt writes citizens are tenaciously fighting the installation of 200-meter tall turbines, even doing so in court, and explains how one CDU-politician is calling for a nationwide wind turbine setback rule based on the one used in the southern state of Bavaria.

Bavarian 10H rule has effectively stopped new wind projects

The Bavarian 10H rule forbids the installation of any wind turbine within a distance equaling 10 times the height of the turbine from any residential area. That means no 200-meter tall turbine can be built within 2 kilometers from a residential area. In Bavaria that rule has literally ended the installation of new wind turbines.

Koeppen told the Handelsblatt that “the citizens must be taken seriously” or else “no progress will be made”.

Currently there’s a wave of lawsuits challenging wind park proposals across the country.

Communities risk being surrounded and plagued

The German UBA Office of Environment, however, warns that even a distance of 1000 meters would reduce the area wind turbines by up to 50% in some places.

Citizens are also very concerned about the health impacts from infrasound generated by wind turbines, which experts claimed can have an impact 10 kilometers away.

Once peaceful communities now find themselves divided

Wind energy has not only divided the environmentalists, but also disturbed the tranquility and harmony once found in many idyllic communities across the country.

Politicians as well are divided. The conservatives in the CDU aim to assure adequate setbacks for wind parks near communities. The socialists in the SPD, on the other hand, wish to relax the rules and thus clear the way for more wind park installation near communities.