National Wind Watch: Wind Energy News » Activist wants wind turbines to WAIT

Peter Aarssen expects Suncor Energy will back away from its Cedar Point Wind Farm in Plympton-Wyoming and Lambton Shores if enough people express concerns.

Aarssen is the head of WAIT – We’re Against Industrial Turbines – in Plympton-Wyoming. In the week the group has been operating, 400 people have gone to its website looking for information about the project which could see up to 62 turbines placed in the two municipalities. Over 100 of those have signed a petition against the project.

WAIT is hosting an information meeting tomorrow at the Camlachie Community Center to talk with neighbours about the project.

At a recent news conference, Aarssen says there are a number of reasons, including health effects and aesthetics that people do not want the turbines in the tradition tourism area of Sarnia-Lambton.

But he says there is also an economic reason. “The construction…of the industrial turbines themselves demand a significant and negative carbon foot print that would require years of industrial wind turbine production to be mathematically off-set,” he says.

Aarssen says people aren’t opposed to green energy, just industrial wind farms and he expects Suncor will respect that.

“I think it is responsible of Suncor to gauge what the public’s opinion really is,” he says. “ I think most of us at first brush only speak in our homes or in the coffee shops. But given the forum and given the facts…I think they’re going to learn in many regions of Ontario there is significant opposition, not to green energy at all but to that one particular element, the turbines, they don’t pencil out.

“They’re such a small producer of energy per unit of investment to get them here.”

Aarssen adds Suncor does have options. “There are solar farms, there are other forms of energy that are probably more publically acceptable; if they’re serving the public…and they are a public corporation serving the public, I think they’ll step away.”

In two previous public meetings, officials from Suncor have told both councils they prefer to work with the community to make the industrial wind farms acceptable but hinted the province does have the final authority to push the project through.