OPINION: Wind needs to stop the excuses and fight back

Given that opinion polls show strong and virtually unchanging public support for wind energy, why does the industry seem to be losing the PR battle? And what can we do about it?

First, we need to stop making excuses. I have been told countless times that the fossil-fuel industry has more influence on policy because it has bigger and better lobbies. In fact, the wind sector has well-established organisations in most major countries, which outgun — at least in numbers — their fossil-fuel equivalents. Some of them, such as the European Wind Energy Association, are highly effective.

But often, and I won’t point any fingers, they are abject, combining lack of panache, organisational ineptitude and low ambition in equal measure. The new…

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