Posted on 02/21/2022 7:10:54 AM PST by Right Wing Vegan
Norway’s easternmost Arctic community of Vardø has long been home to surveillance and intelligence-gathering operations so important to NATO, especially now during its ongoing conflict with Russia. Vardø, like other areas of Northern Norway, has grown used to the presence of hush-hush facilities and their personnel amongst them, but now a local conflict has arisen over wind power.
Such conflicts are nothing new. While the vast majority of Norwegians are in favour of more investment in renewable energy, as opposed to oil, few want towering turbines in their own backyard.
That’s what seems to set Vardø apart: Residents long used to huge radar installations looming over their town don’t seem to mind the prospect of turbines, too, that would capture some of the most consistent winds in the country and, potentially, generate much-needed electricity, income and tax revenues.
“We have Norway’s best wind power resources,” Vardø Mayor Ørjan Jensen of the Greens Party (MDG) told newspaper Klassekampen. “For us, it’s a disadvantage if it can’t be used.”
Jensen, Norway’s only mayor from the Greens Party, and his fellow local government officials are positive towards the plans of two companies to build a wind power plant that could generate not only needed electricity but NOK 600 million in property tax revenue. The turbines and their operations could also help secure electric power in the remote, often stormy area, and have positive economic ripple effects in the small city that’s seen its population decline by more than half since 1970, to less than 2,000. A wind power plant could attract other “green” industry, too.
Defending defense installations Jensen and his colleagues in Vardø, however, are meeting stiff resistance from Norwegian defense officials who locally oversee the Vardø radar operations on behalf of the US and NATO. They fear the large turbines will “disturb” their sensitive equipment in Vardø.
“Our operative needs don’t make it possible to recommend establishment of a windmill park in the proposed area,” Lt Col Vegar Finberg, spokesman for the defense department’s leadership, confirmed to Klassekampen. They simply won’t allow wind turbines near their installations.
Jensen said he and his colleagues in Vardø have had meetings with defense officials and sent a letter to the Office of the Prime Minister. They haven’t received any signals that the government will overrule the defense officials who represent NATO and the US.
The Vardø officials then asked for compensation for the revenues they stand to lose, but have been turned down. Finberg told Klassekampen that the defense department understands Vardø’s disappointment, but leans heavily on a report from the Norway’s waterways and energy directorate NVE. It concludes that wind turbines would disturb electronic installations, including coastal radar, weapons systems and low-altitude aircraft operations.
It’s ironic that a community finally willing to erect wind turbines should meet obstacles from a government that otherwise promotes them. In most cases, it’s the local communities that have objected to the turbines, because of how they scar the landscape and create noise. The state has often pushed them through, but not in this case involving powerful security and defense interests.
Jensen is disappointed that his city can’t invest in and develop wind power, because of the local defense installations it must host. “We had hoped that green energy would give us a business advantage and create jobs,” he said. “If that’s not possible, we will ask for state assistance.”
Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre of the Labour Party will be under political pressure to respond. His Labour-Center government campaigned on a platform of further developing Northern Norway and trying to re-populate the vast region. That’s also an important part of defense strategy in an area that shares a border with Russia.
Defense and intelligence presence in Vardø’s region of Finnmark, meanwhile, already ranks as a major employer. Neither Jensen nor politicians in other local towns like Vadsø know what all the defense personnel living in their area actually do, but they’re clearly part of the “eyes and ears” for NATO in the far north to which Norwegian government officials routinely refer.
So-called “specialists” from the US are currently in Vardø, and leasing the small city’s main hotel for at least two years, according to Klassekampen, while they build their latest new radar system. Jensen calls the installation already in place above the city “NATO’s most valuable piece of property, with its endless views towards the east.”
Interesting. I didn’t realize Norway has a small stretch of border with Russia.
They must hate birds and bats also.
So, why is the population in Northern Norway dropping?
(Varda said to be down over 50% since 1970.)
Freeper, it is cold outside !
I’m always skeptical of population drop hysteria. The press always hypes population drop scares ahead of huge immigration waves, to make the incoming swarms look like heroes.
Green energy for thee, but not for me.
It was the presence of very large numbers of German occupying troops, holding this border, which led to one of the worst ‘scorched earth’ German retreats in 1945. Virtually everything above ground was torched, the city of Alta etc completely destroyed. The population only survived by taking refuge in their hunting and fishing huts in the mountains.
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