A group of activists demanding a stop to the construction of new wind farms and large solar plants in Europe have rallied in front of the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.
On June 4, the activists, representing organisations from countries including France, Spain, Sweden, Germany, the Netherlands and Belgium, called the European Union-driven policies aimed at making Europe climate neutral in the near future “a charade”.
They said there was a lack of economic, social and environmental assessment of the European public interest in the enormous financing of variable renewable energies and that the reduction of fossil-based emissions was insignificant.
According to the activists, current European policies have led to negative prices and volatility – depending on the state of market prices.
On top of this, network fees, such as balancing costs, grid connection and grid reinforcement, have gone up while at the same time European energy dependence has been increasing, they said.
A new study by Swedish think-tank the Scandinavian Policy Institute (SPI) has warned that the promotion of wind power as being cost-effective and reliable was misleading at best. https://t.co/0WWBSKp2DN
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) May 28, 2025
Dan Persson, president of pressure group Motvind Sveriges, told Brussels Signal during the protest that his group was not against wind per se but was opposed to a power source that he said lost 40 per cent of its allocated capacity.
“People living nearby experience negative health effects and the value of their real estate plummets,” Persson claimed.
“We oppose the fact that all Swedish taxpayers have to pay more for the distribution of electricity.”
According to Persson, the real winners were German companies including Siemens and Bosch, which supplied the services and infrastructure for constructing the wind farms. That was, he said, despite 92 per cent of that energy being exported to Germany, offering little to no benefit to the Swedish taxpayers who funded them.
He said five years ago it was virtually impossible to publicly oppose wind farms but that things had changed.
“Last year, we had only two windmills in the whole of Sweden, on a total number of 5,000.”
Persson said about 5,000 MW of electricity has been approved by the authorities but no one wanted to invest anymore, “because they are losing money”.
“They need subsidies for around 10 eurocent per KWh to make a profit and that means that the people are enriching the Chinese-owned windpower companies and paying for the Chinese dictatorship.”
He said the proposal of a moratorium on new wind farms would also offer time to investigate until what level Sweden could accept the use of solar and wind energy and what the cost would be for the total energy system.
Persson noted that Swedish wind energy was mostly being gathered in the north of the country but it needed to be transported to the south, triggering the need for the grid to be upgraded.
He also warned that intermittent energy was unable to satisfactorily provide power in industrial countries, “simple as that”.
Dutch consumers could pay three times as much for electricity after an ambitious offshore energy expansion, barring a massive change to the current financing model. https://t.co/QUXLfnK4Z9
— Brussels Signal (@brusselssignal) May 30, 2025
