More Proof Wind Energy Isn’t “Clean” Or “Green." Irish Court Orders Wind Turbines Shut Down Due To Noise Pollution
After a 12-year legal battle, a Dublin judge orders a wind company to shutter three turbines and pay nearby property owners $411,000 in damages.
For more than a decade, Big Wind has been lying about the adverse health effects of turbine noise. But in yet another case — this one in Ireland — courts are finding that citizens who have sued over noise pollution generated by giant wind turbines have valid complaints, and judges are ordering Big Wind to pay up. The latest decision came this week when a court in Dublin ordered the permanent shuttering of three of the six Nodex wind turbines at the Gibbet Hill wind project in County Wexford.
It is a historic ruling. It is the first time a court in Ireland has ordered the shutdown of a wind project.
The ruling came after a 12-year legal battle launched by Raymond Byrne and Lorna Moorhead, who complained that turbine noise from the Gibbet Hill project was causing sleep disturbance, stress, and anxiety, and had destroyed the use and enjoyment of their property. One of the turbines was located about 1,000 meters from their house. In addition to ordering the shutdown of the turbines, which were built in 2013, the court ordered the project’s owner, ABO Energy Ireland, to pay Byrne and Moorhead $343,000 in compensation and another $68,000 for “aggravated damages.”
In the ruling, the judge excoriated the company for its refusal to “substantially engage with the plaintiffs’ complaints” and that its refusal to do so “significantly aggravated and prolonged the upset, disturbance, and distress experienced by the plaintiffs.”
Before going further, let me state the obvious: This judgment, and the other court judgments made against Big Wind that I will list in a minute, don’t fit the narrative that has been relentlessly promoted by the NGO-corporate-industrial-climate complex about “clean,” “green,” and “renewable” wind energy. However, the undeniable truth is that noise pollution is pollution, and prolonged exposure to noise pollution harms human health.
Of course, Big Wind has known about the noise pollution issue for years but has refused to admit it harms people. Why? Billions of dollars in subsidies are at stake.
Sure, plenty of reports claim wind turbine noise isn’t harmful and that the people who complain about the noise and the health problems caused by the infrasound and low-frequency noise the turbines generate are simply whiners or are feeling a “nocebo” effect. Furthermore, the American Clean Power Association (annual revenue: $62.3 million), formerly known as the American Wind Energy Association, still claims on its website that “there is no scientific evidence that wind turbines cause health issues.”
A bigger lie is difficult to conjure.
But as I said above, Big Wind (and its myriad minions) has to keep lying about the noise pollution problem to continue collecting subsidies. Further, over the past few years, NextEra Energy, the world’s biggest producer of solar and wind energy, and other alt-energy companies have quietly settled a number of lawsuits filed against them by landowners who have cited turbine noise in their legal complaints.
For more than 15 years, I have been documenting the rural backlash against Big Wind by rural residents who have been assaulted in their homes by the noise pollution from wind turbines. In 2010, in my book, Power Hungry: The Myths of Green Energy and the Real Fuels of The Future, I explained that people living near new wind projects in “Texas, Oregon, New York, and Minnesota, as well as in numerous foreign countries, including England, New Zealand, Canada, France, and Australia have complained about the noise,” from wind turbines. Also, in 2010, I published a piece in the Wall Street Journal about the widespread noise complaints and the “emerging citizen backlash against the booming global wind industry.”
Numerous studies have found that turbine noise is a problem. In 2009, a study by the Minnesota Department of Health detailed the problems associated with noise from wind turbines. The key passage says, “The most common complaint in various studies of wind turbine effects on people is annoyance or an impact on quality of life. Sleeplessness and headache are the most common health complaints.”
In 2010, Dr. Michael Nissenbaum, a radiologist in Fort Kent, Maine, did a landmark study. He surveyed about two dozen residents who live near the Mars Hill wind project in northeastern Maine. His findings: 82% of the residents living within about 1,100 meters of the wind turbines complained of sleep disturbance. As Nissenbaum (who I met several years ago) explains, if you deprive people of sleep, they will get sick. “It is a medical fact that sleep disturbance and perceived stress result in ill effects, including and especially cardiovascular disease,” he explains, “but also chronic feelings of depression, anger, helplessness, and, in the aggregate, the banishment of happiness and reduced quality of life.”
As 2012 literature review found that when turbines are located too close to homes, “The prolonged exposure to the audible and inaudible range of acoustic characteristics of wind turbine noise adversely affects people’s health.”
I could cite many more studies that prove the harm wind turbine noise has on human health. For more, I suggest you read the 2021 paper I wrote for the Center of The American Experiment called “Not In Our Backyard.”
Now, back to the lawsuits.
In 2021, a French court awarded $114,000 to a couple in southern France who had six wind turbines installed 700 meters from their home. As with many other cases involving complaints about wind turbine noise, the couple said they experienced headaches, sleeplessness, heart palpitations, dizziness, tinnitus, and nausea.
In 2023, another wind project in France was ordered shuttered due to noise complaints from local residents. The court ordered the project’s owner, a subsidiary of the German company EnW, to dismantle the turbines within 15 months and return the land to its natural state.
In 2024, an Irish court found that a wind project in County Wexford was creating a noise nuisance and sided with two nearby landowners who had sued over noise from the Ballyduff wind project. The court ruled the noise amounted to an “unreasonable interference” with the enjoyment of the owners’ property. As reported by the Irish Times, the judge found there were frequent and sustained periods of noise “widely acknowledged to be associated with high levels of annoyance,” and that the noise level “occurs commonly and for sustained periods.” The judge also found the noise levels were “unreasonable and exceptional.”
As I noted above, these legal cases defenestrate the wind energy propaganda churned out by climate NGOs, the American Clean Power Association, and legacy media outlets. But the truth about the deleterious health impacts of wind turbine noise on human health is finally catching up to Big Wind.
It’s about damn time.
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You always dig up great stories that are intentionally hidden by legacy media and/or the “clean power” narrative. Thanks
Thank you for your reporting on this important health issue. The wind industry response that you document is eerily similar to the tactics of tobacco companies. For decades, tobacco companies denied the adverse health impacts of smoking. Many tenacious reporters, collaborating with scientists, spent considerable time and effort to establish the harms of smoking - and force legal change.