The wind blows where it chooses …

Every year as I was growing up my family would hitch the caravan to the back of my Dad’s car and we would set off from our home in a small Lincolnshire village near Sleaford, and travel down the A17 on our annual holiday to Cromer in Norfolk. As we drove down the incline into Cromer the challenge would be to see who caught sight of the sea first, and on the journey home it would be to spot Heckington windmill.¹ Lincolnshire is renowned for its flatness and windmills and church spires can be seen for miles around. Heckington windmill is particularly of note as it is the only remaining 8-sail type in Britain, built in 1830 with 5 sails, upgraded to 8 in 1892 after a storm, and after falling into disuse in 1943 restored and now open to the public in recent years.

The power of the wind was harnessed by windmills to mechanise the turning of corn into flour as part of the process of bread production and first appeared in North-Eastern Europe as long ago as the 12th century, and were common until the industrial revolution when they were superseded by steam engines. The wind is a powerful symbol in our tradition pointing towards the Spirit of God: that moved over the waters in creation, parted the Red Sea, and filled the room at Pentecost. The wind is an ever-present reminder of the power of God within nature.

’The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.’ John 3:8 (NRSV).

Bread is a staple part of our diet and has been for centuries from the manual threshing and grinding in every home to the pre-packaged items in our shopping trolleys. It is also a metaphor for the basic nourishment required for existence. From the manna in the wilderness, the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus breaking bread in communion with his disciples, our remembrance of that and by our constant prayer to God: ‘Give us this day our daily bread’ makes the Christian tradition a friend to bakers everywhere!

Times have changed. Bread is no longer the daily fruit of hours of patient labour for members of our family; it is one of many split-second actions we make in a supermarket. Jesus gave the words of the Lord’s Prayer to a predominantly peasant community whose primary concern would have been whether they would have food enough for today. When most of us consider the greatest danger we face each day it is not ‘will we have enough bread to eat’, it is more likely to be job security, crime, road safety, or environmental changes. In our culture bread is no longer felt to be the basic thing of life; that description is more likely to be given to electricity. Which brings us back to windmills; the ingenuity of our ancestors harnessed the wind to revolutionise the production of a basic requirement for life, and today it is happening again!

On another journey, this time by train from my Mum’s to London, I passed an open field north of Peterborough which was home to a wind farm. Amid the flatness around it stood these giant children’s toys peacefully turning and generating electricity. I know wind farms are not to everyone’s aesthetic taste, but I like them. Their simplicity and elegance make me smile. Sitting on that train staring out of the window gave me a real sense of the splendour of creation and of the Creator behind, within, and before it. That would be my own spiritual argument in their favour and I’ll also support that with some facts:²

First, how do they work? A simple illustration is to imagine them working in the opposite way to a fan. A fan uses electricity to make wind; a turbine uses wind to make electricity. The blades of a wind turbine face the wind; the blades turn a shaft which drives a gear box to increase the rotation speed enough for the generator which produces electricity. That electricity is then fed into a transformer and on to the national grid. The modern turbines do this with very little mechanical noise, the main sound being the aerodynamic swoosh of the blades passing the tower.

Second, are they worth it? There has to be a balance between the energy required to build something and the energy it produces, this 'energy balance' can be expressed in terms of energy 'pay back' time. The figure for an average wind farm in the UK is within six to eight months, which compares favourably with coal or nuclear power stations, which take about six months. They will last between 20-25 years and the cost of an average new onshore wind farm in a good location is 3-4 pence per unit, competitive with new coal (2.5-4.5p) and cheaper than new nuclear (4-7p).

Third, how do they impact the local environment? One definition of a weed is ‘a plant growing in the wrong place’ and a wind farm can be seen as an eyesore or an enhancement depending on the context and the eye of the beholder. They also need to be in the right place with regard the environment around them, not just human preferences. There have been mistakes made within the industry, notably the "bogalanche"³ when the peat bog above the village of Derrybrien in county Galway, Ireland, began to move following the excavations for a turbines foundation in 2003, and the killing of nine white-tailed eagles on the Smola islands off the Norwegian coast.⁴ With the right legislative safeguards, and our own active engagement with the debates on placement, these mistakes can be prevented. The RSPB⁵ stated in 2004 that "in the UK, we have not so far witnessed any major adverse effects on birds associated with wind farms".

Fourth, how popular are they? Most of the headlines concern objections to wind farms being built in places of natural beauty – which is understandable but these places also tend to be good sites and at present offshore wind farms are less economic to produce. However opinion polls show that a vast majority of us are in favour of them. More than eight out of ten people are in favour and less than one in ten against it. However, this 5% are often the most vocal and determined which gives the impression that wind farms are very unpopular. An interesting statistic is that recent studies have shown that the closer people live to a wind farm the more supportive they are of both the project and wind power as an energy source. We need to work harder on finding the right places, and in raising the voices of the majority of people who are in favour of their construction.

In our modern era the engineers and scientists that stand in the tradition of those first windmills and the industrial revolution have taken the wind and harnessed it to create the electricity that powers our lifestyle. Our lifestyle is of course part of the problem and our first action should be to reduce our consumption of electricity, but after that we need sources of electricity that are sustainable and efficient. Wind farms clearly fulfil those requirements and need to be part of the range of energy sources to meet our future energy needs and environmental obligations. Within all this is our affirmation of Creation as God’s gift to us; and we all have a part to play, as individuals and societies, in preserving that gift and sharing its blessings with every present and future inhabitant of it.

Rev’d David Coaker