Poll shows Australians want wind power

Pacific Hydro's latest community showed overwhelming support for the construction of wind farms.

The telephone survey, conducted by independent research company QDos, interviewed residents in ten wind farm communities across Victoria, New South Wales and South Australia. The interviews were undertaken in November 2011 in areas where wind farms are already in existence or under development.

“We were especially interested to hear what local communities living close to existing and proposed wind farms had to say,” said Mr Lane Crockett, General Manager Australia.

“We are keen to get a true picture of the support for wind farms in regional Australia and that is why we did not survey city dwellers as they are not the people that are living nearby.” said Mr Crockett.

The level of support for wind farms was 83% overall with just 14% opposed to their development. While there is overwhelming support across all regions, support was higher in Victoria and South Australia than in selected New South Wales regions.

The results confirm that the majority of regional Australians support wind generation and continue to have positive attitudes towards wind farms in their local communities. It also confirms that wind energy is overwhelmingly more popular than non-renewable forms of energy.

Just over a quarter of people supported building a new coal fired power plant while a clear majority of 65% of residents were opposed.

“We have an obligation to our children’s future to create less pollution and the community recognises that wind energy is a great way to shift from polluting energy sources to clean, green, renewable energy,” said Mr Crockett.

The perceived impacts of wind farms causing some level of concern are the depreciation of property values, with 5 in 10; the effect on visual amenity, 4 out of 10; and noise,  4 in10. Of a much lower order concern for survey participants were the perceived health problems, with only 1 in 10, despite the media focus on this issue.

“However, this recent poll shows that there continues to be overwhelming support for wind farms and the recent negative messaging and constant attacks by some in the community does not appear to be altering public opinion too much,”  Mr Crockett added.

“The results of this poll should serve as a clear message to politicians and policy developers in all three states that most people like wind power”, Mr Crockett concluded.