Debate, Power production | Disadvantages Renewable Norway does not want to talk about

Thor Egil Braadland is the new authority contact (lobbyist) in Renewable Norway. He writes in Norwegian newspapers about how those who oppose wind power spread myths. In doing so, he also undermines the opinion of half of the population who are against wind power.

Braadland’s campaign posts are spread throughout the country – also in Oppland Arbeiderblad on 12 April. We believe that the campaign post must be seen as pure disinformation due to everything he omits to mention and the erroneous impression he gives of wind power, and must therefore receive yet another strong response.

Braadland tries to convince us that all the wind power plants in Norway take up only 20 square kilometers. In other words, Fornybar Norge believes that we are in untouched nature when we stand 100 meters out in the heather and look up at a noisy, flashing and spinning wind turbine more than 200 meters high.

The plan area used for the 64 wind power plants in Norway is a whopping 600 square kilometers, but the area that is harnessed is even much larger. Noise-laden area that is unsuitable for both housing and recreation is over 1,000 square kilometers – approximately half of Vestfold county.

Braadland also tries to compare Blåsjø with wind power plants. But Blåsjø doesn’t make noise, doesn’t flash day and night, doesn’t cast shadows, doesn’t grind birds to death, etc. Blåsjø is our largest perennial reservoir for hydropower – in other words, a huge battery. Compared to Tesla batteries, some believe that Blåsjø can be worth up to four times the oil fund. How much are Braadland’s 2,000 wind turbines worth? Hardly anything special – at least if you are to judge by Swedish studies of profitability.

Braadland claims that wind turbines produce almost all the time, but anyone who follows a wind farm will see that there is almost always someone standing. Since the effect from a wind turbine varies with the third power of the wind speed, production increases sharply with the wind strength. At 4 m/second wind, a spinning wind turbine only produces “enough to make coffee”. Depending on the model and location, a wind turbine only produces electricity equivalent to what it would have produced in three to four out of 12 months assuming it was producing at full capacity all the time.

Braadland claims that a wind turbine loses only 200 grams of mass each year. The wind turbines have their blades serviced approximately every four years and the service industry for blades is a billion-dollar industry. It’s pretty ridiculous to think that they spend that much money and lost production to replace 800 grams of wear on a turbine, less than a can of paint, every four years.

Due to the wind industry’s reluctance to provide data, there is great uncertainty about how much toxic plastic and epoxy products are worn by the wings and end up in nature. We think it is absolutely certain that the number is much higher than 200 grams. This is yet another example of how Fornybar Norge’s arguments often fail even the simplest logic test.

Braadland is then trying to scare us into believing that the power surplus, which NVE says is 20 TWh, may disappear in 2028. It is of course conceivable if Statnett is allowed to continue uncritically and without clear criteria to distribute access to power in the east and west in large amounts of 2-5 per cent of the entire country’s power supply. There is now a completely senseless waste of power that is offered to data centers and hydrogen and ammonia factories that create almost no jobs or value for society.

We believe that any power deficit will be self-inflicted damage as a result of a failed energy policy without management. Why would municipalities want to sacrifice nature, open air areas and public health to cover such a senseless waste of power, society’s most important input factor?

“It will go just fine,” assures lobbyist Braadland. It is, of course, “his sick mother” Braadland is crying for: the wind power industry is unable to get the wind power projects approved because the population has long since realized that wind power entails a number of disadvantages that Braadland and his colleagues do not like to talk about.

Renewable Norway should choose whether they want to be perceived as a serious organization – or whether they want to continue producing false narratives on a conveyor belt as Braadland does.