Wind Power in View: Energy Landscapes in a Crowded World (review)

This collection of articles addresses the paradox of wind power technology: Wind power is generally perceived as environmentally friendly, and yet, locally, wind turbines are often seen as environmentally unfriendly because they are "unavoidably visible, even intrusive" (p. 4). That wind power technology involves several conflicting aspects may come as no surprise to readers of Technology and Culture. But the dilemmas are real: How to make proponents and opponents of wind power appreciate the arguments of the other side? What to do about the intrusive visibility of wind turbines in a crowded world?

These are some of the questions raised in this important book on wind power and the landscape, the product of a ten-day conference at the Rockefeller Foundation's conference center on Lake Como, Italy. Reflecting the complexity of the issue at hand, its contributors come from a variety of fields: history, geography, the wind power industry, philosophy, social geography, electrical engineering, art, and landscape architecture and planning. This multidisciplinary approach makes the book both interesting and uneven, but, each in a different way, the contributors all address the relationship between technology and nature.

Coeditor Robert W. Righter, author of Wind Energy in America: A History (1996), argues that Americans have favored an orderly, rationalistic, and utilitarian view of nature. One result of such habits of thought has been a preference for straight lines, as illustrated by the rows of turbines in wind energy parks. These invite opposition. Righter suggests that arrangements of turbines should harmonize with nature and with particular landscapes, in much the same way that Christo's colored umbrellas were in harmony with the Californian desert. Artist Laurence Short also relates wind-turbine siting to art, but in a more literal manner. He believes that planning processes must become more democratic and more inclusive. The role of the artist, as a facilitator of changes in human perception, would be to explore new ways of seeing wind turbines as icons for a sustainable future. Philosopher Gordon G. Brittan Jr. suggests that there is no aesthetic norm which posits that wind turbines are visually beautiful. Therefore, he calls on wind power proponents to construct aesthetics that are not visual but rather historical and moral.

In his contribution, Paul Gipe, one of the coeditors and a wind-power pioneer, supplements Brittan by suggesting a set of "pragmatic guidelines for how the wind industry and proponents of renewable energy can present wind energy's best face" (p. 175, italics in original). According to Gipe, wind power's proponents ought to heed the lessons of nuclear power and make certain that the visual consumers of wind power feel fully enfranchised.

The volume also contains case studies by geographer and coeditor Martin Pasqualetti, social geographer Karin Hammarlund, electrical engineer Martin Hoppe-Kilppner, landscape architects Frode Birk Nielsen and Christoph Schwahn, and landscape planner Urta Steinhäuser. Together, they represent important North European and North American experiences of wind turbine siting and planning. Therefore, even if Wind Power in View is lacking in overall coherence, the volume presents fascinating comparisons, parallels, and intersections among different wind-energy theories and practices, all of which are rewarding discoveries for the curious reader.