The familiar pattern of wind farm objections, Nimby protests, planning difficulties, and investment set backs have returned to the UK this week. By James Murray, from BusinessGreen.com, part of the Guardian Environment Network

Anyone familiar with the two steps forward, one and three quarter steps back world of the UK's renewable energy industry is unlikely to have been surprised by the past week, but that does not stop it being teeth gnashingly frustrating.

Just a fortnight on from the release of the government's much vaunted Low Carbon Industrial Plan and the familiar pattern of wind farm objections, Nimby protests, planning difficulties, and investment set backs has returned.

The most high profile slap in the face for the sector comes in the form of Vestas' plans to close its wind turbine factory on the Isle of Wight, despite the brave efforts of staff to oppose the decision by staging a sit in at the plant, jeopardising any chance of redundancy payments in the process.

There have been plenty of suggestions that Vestas' decision to close the plant is short sighted and that the government should step in to nationalise the facility. But while the issuing of dismissal letters inside a food parcel sent to the protestors was crass in the extreme, it is much harder to fault the commercial logic behind the decision to close the plant.

The factory was building blades that were then being exported to the US. At the same time, the company has a plant in the US capable of delivering the same blades at lower cost. It makes sense from both a commercial, and indeed an environmental perspective for turbines for the US market to be built in the US.

Vestas did look at converting the Isle of Wight factory to produce blades for the UK market, but decided that the risk that demand for the new turbines would not be forthcoming was too high. Was this an unreasonable decision?

Well, The British Wind Energy Association is right to point out that up to 2,700 new wind turbines are expected to be erected by 2012 with over 700 under construction and nearly 2,000 having secured planning permission. Meanwhile, the additional £1bn of financing announced by the government this week should ensure that those projects that have planning permission are indeed built.

And yet Vestas would be forgiven for arguing that it has seen such predictions in the past, only for the pipeline of new projects to be blocked time and again by local objections to planning applications, followed by long winding appeals that in many cases ended in disappointment.

It could point to Greenpeace's recent report showing that between December 2005 and November 2008 Tory councils blocked 158.2MW of wind energy projects, approving just 44.7MW, while Labour councils fared only a bit better rejecting 62.6MW, while approving just 68.3MW.

If it wanted more timely examples, it could highlight the news today that the RSPB is to formally oppose plans for the UK's largest onshore wind farm on the Shetland Islands, after previously indicating it would support the proposal. Or the decision by RES to cut the number of turbines at its planned Minnygap wind farm in Scotland from 15 to 10 in an attempt to win planning approval. Or Ecotricity's recent appeal against a decision that saw plans for a 12MW wind farm in North Dorset rejected despite planning authorities recommending to councillors that the proposals should be approved. The list goes on and on.

It is horrible for the workers involved, but you can understand why Vestas has decided that it has had enough operating in an environment where the market it serves is at the whim of a small minority of locally-fixated Nimby protestors and popularity courting councillors. If staff, trade unions and green groups want to protest against Vestas' decision, it is the government, and in particular wind farm blocking councils, that should be the target.

The fact is Nimbyism is at the root of most of the clean tech industry's problems, and what's more it is only going to get worse. The conservationist campaign against the proposed Severn Barrage is already gathering momentum, the anti-wind lobby is if anything getting more vocal and has substantial support on the back benches of a Conservative party that looks destined to form the next government, objections to biomass and waste-to-energy plants are increasingly common, and if the recent opposition to planned carbon capture and storage plants in Germany and the Netherlands is anything to go by, even this technology could be hamstrung by people worried about living above carbon sinks....

By James Murray. Read more