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A guide for Urban Wind Energy in the UK

Promoting passive and active wind energy as a positive response to climate change.

This guide aims to increase awareness of the benefits of wind energy and the potential to harness it within an urban environment. It is intended as an overview for individuals and groups who are interested in setting up an urban wind energy project, with or without specialist help, and covers the sorts of issues that are likely to arise technological, environmental, political, financial.

Each topic is dealt with in a general way to get across the key facts. The Resources section provides a list of useful organisations, websites, books and periodicals. The list is by no means exhaustive it is intended as a starting point, from which new contacts and sources of information can be found.

Urban wind energy receives much less attention than wind farms in upland rural areas and offshore, where large turbines in very windy locations have the capacity to generate significant amounts of electricity. Urban wind projects should not be seen as competing with big wind farms: they can’t. However, there are real opportunities to harness the wind in towns and cities.

Urban wind energy can help to reduce our energy demand, provide a source of clean, local power, and raise awareness of the importance of renewable energy in the context of climate change.