The decision as to whether wind farms should be erected in a given municipality should rest with local authorities—not Alþingi, says Samorka, the federation of energy and utility companies in Iceland, RÚV reports.
A parliamentary working group is currently seeking feedback from utility providers and local municipalities regarding wind energy utilization throughout the country. For its part, Samorka wants to be able to erect wind farms in places where harnessing wind power is facilitated by wind direction, the surrounding landscape, and the existing infrastructure, provided that the local community is in favour of the turbines and that no environmentally protected areas are damaged in the process.
“This is a decision about temporary utilization in a specific area and of course it’s the residents and their elected officials who are best suited to assessing what the impacts will be and whether [the erecting of wind turbines] should go ahead,” said Samorka executive director Finnur Beck.
The mayor of Fljótsdalshérað, a district in East Iceland that plans to erect wind farms, was recently quoted as being in agreement with Samorka, believing that decisions about this should rest with local communities.
There has been some concern, however, that large-scale windfarms could soon become a feature of landscapes all over the country. Landvernd, the Icelandic Environment Association, has declared wind turbines “an attack on Icelandic nature” and in the wake of various wind utilization proposals, put together a map to help visualize what a potential proliferation of windfarms in Iceland could actually look like. Landvernd says that as many as 40 wind farms are currently on the table.
Finnur says, however, that the idea was never to erect all of wind farms that had been proposed, simply that a number of potential sites were identified when the National Energy Authority, Orkustofnun, called for proposals.
Asked if Samorka was looking to erect wind farms “all over the place, as some have predicted,” Finnur was quick to demur.
“No, and it’s a good thing you ask about that,” he said. “There was a fair amount time given [for wind energy harnessing proposals] and this led to a number of ideas about potential wind energy projects. But these sites still need to be studied and a lot of work remains to be done in a lot of places and I have no reason to believe—or it is almost definitely out of the question—that [turbines would be erected] in all of the places that have been identified as potential wind energy utilization sites in the current framework programme.”
