There is a strange irony sitting at the heart of the energy transition right now. Wind and solar are growing faster than almost anyone predicted a decade ago. Renewables covered 45.5% of the EU’s total electricity in Q1 2026, according to Eurostat, with wind leading the renewable mix at 44.9%, followed by hydropower at 28% and solar at 17.3%. And yet, on the sunniest, windiest days, some of that clean power is being deliberately switched off or turned down. Not because something broke. Not because the grid failed. Because, for that hour, there is simply more electricity being generated than there is demand for it, and supply outpacing demand this way is exactly what pushes prices down and makes running the turbine no longer worth it (source).

In short: wind and solar farms are increasingly being curtailed because wholesale electricity prices are set hour by hour based on supply and demand, and when renewable output floods the market on a good weather day, prices can fall to zero or below. This is becoming more common as renewable capacity grows faster than the grid’s ability to store or shift that power, and it changes how a project’s profitability should actually be assessed.

This piece covers why that happens, how hourly electricity prices actually get set, and where storage fits in. Then I’ll share my own take, on why the usual way we assess a wind site’s potential is starting to miss half the story.

The Mismatch Nobody Designed For

Here’s the underlying tension. Wind and solar generate electricity based on weather, not on when people actually want to use it. A wind farm doesn’t know it’s a Tuesday afternoon with low demand. It just generates when the wind blows. As more of these weather-dependent sources get added to the grid, without a matching increase in the ability to store or shift electricity use, there are more and more hours where supply simply outstrips demand.

When that happens, wholesale electricity prices can fall to zero, or even go negative, meaning generators effectively have to pay to keep exporting power. This isn’t confined to any one country or region, and the picture is genuinely global. In 2025, the share of hours with negative prices rose to around 6% in France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Spain, up from roughly 3 to 5% in 2024, with Spain seeing the sharpest jump (hours roughly doubling) and France close behind (up 45%). At the same time, Finland and Sweden, previously among the worst affected, saw negative-price hours fall by around 40% and 30% respectively, while California and Texas also saw declines. Meanwhile South Australia and Victoria in Australia saw negative pricing rise further, driven largely by increased overnight wind generation (source).

It’s a structural feature of adding renewable capacity faster than a grid’s flexibility can keep pace, and where storage and flexibility have scaled up quickly, the trend can and does reverse.

So How Does the Price for That Hour Actually Get Set?

This part rarely gets explained clearly, and it matters a lot for understanding why curtailment happens at all.

In most electricity markets, the price for each hour is set through a day-ahead wholesale auction. Generators bid in what’s supplied and at what price, and the market matches supply to demand for every hour of the next day. But the price everyone pays, and every generator earns, isn’t an average of those bids. It’s set at the margin, the price of the single most expensive generator still needed to meet demand that hour. This is easiest to see visually.

This chart shows the merit order, generators ranked from cheapest to most expensive.

One quick clarification: what’s bid here is marginal cost, the cost of producing one more unit that specific hour, not average cost across a whole year. It includes fuel where relevant, plus maintenance, staffing, wear and tear, and safety checks, everything it takes to run that plant a little bit more, right now.

Solar, wind, and hydro sit at the bottom, bidding at or below $0/MWh, here at -$20/MWh. Once built, there’s no fuel to buy, so they’ll bid low just to guarantee dispatch. Many also receive subsidies paid per unit generated, so they can still profit even bidding negative. Nuclear comes next at $20/MWh, low but real running costs, and it also tends to bid low rather than shut down, since restarting a reactor is slow and expensive. Coal and gas sit at the top, $40/MWh here, burning fuel on top of maintenance and staffing costs. Oil sits higher still, which is why it doesn’t appear on this chart.

The dashed line in green marks demand for that hour - 8,000 MW. The market fills the stack cheapest first: all of solar, wind, and hydro (4,000 MW), then all of nuclear (up to 7,000 MW), then just enough coal or gas to cover the last 1,000 MW. That last, most expensive generator needed sets the price for the whole hour in blue: $40/MWh.

Now imagine wind, solar, and hydro alone could cover the full 8,000 MW on a particularly windy, sunny day. Nuclear and coal wouldn’t be needed, and the price-setting generator would itself be a renewable bidding near or below $0/MWh. That’s the entire mechanism behind negative prices: the marginal, price-setting generator simply changes depending on how much low-cost supply is available that hour.

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Yes, More Renewables Really Can Mean Cheaper Energy, When the Weather Cooperates

The more wind and solar you add, the more they tend to all generate at the same time (when the weather is good across a region), and the more they collectively push the price down during exactly those hours, that is called as price cannibalization.

For an individual project, this means that generating a lot of energy on a good weather day isn’t automatically a financial win. If every other wind and solar asset in the region is also generating heavily at that same moment, the price that hour might be near zero, or negative.

Storage Helps, But It Doesn’t Answer the Real Question

The most talked-about solution to this mismatch is energy storage, mainly batteries. The logic is straightforward: instead of curtailing a wind farm when there’s too much supply, store that extra energy in a battery and release it later, when demand (and price) picks back up.

Alongside storage, there’s a second lever worth mentioning: demand response, enabled by smart meters. Rather than storing the excess energy, this approach shifts when electricity gets used, for example, an EV charger or heat pump automatically running during a cheap or negative-price hour instead of the evening peak, effectively soaking up the surplus in real time rather than saving it for later. Smart meters are what make this possible at a household level, since they can track usage hour by hour rather than as one lump total, giving both households and grid operators the visibility to act on price signals as they happen.

Storage and demand response both help solve the problem at a system level: less energy wasted overall, fewer hours of deep negative pricing, a grid that can absorb more renewables without curtailing them. But neither one answers the question a developer actually needs answered before committing capital to a site:

Will this specific project, in this specific location, actually be profitable?

What This Means for How We Assess Sites

The standard job of a wind resource analyst (me) is to answer one question: how much energy will this site produce? We build yield estimates, P50s, P90s, using historical wind data, terrain, and turbine specs. It’s genuinely useful, but it was built for a world where more energy produced reliably meant more revenue earned. Curtailment and negative pricing are quietly breaking that assumption.

Two sites can have near-identical wind resource on paper and still be worth very different amounts, because what matters now is capture price, not just output. Here’s the catch: build somewhere with strong wind or solar resource, and other developers have likely spotted the same good weather and built nearby too. The grid around your project ends up saturated with wind and solar generating at the same time as you, exactly when prices tend to fall.

The trouble is capture price isn’t a fixed number you can look up. It’s local, tied to the specific grid node a project sits in, and dynamic, shifting every time a new plant comes online nearby. A generic regional price curve can’t capture that.

Same market, same average price, same total generation, but Site A earns roughly $11.7/MWh while Site B earns roughly $34/MWh. Site A generated heavily at 11:00 and 12:00, exactly when the market was oversupplied and prices were low or negative. Site B generated more at 10:00, 13:00, and 14:00, when prices were higher. Two sites in the same broader market can still see quite different local wind timing, so identical zone-level pricing doesn’t mean identical value.

A few region-specific models already attempt this, forecasting prices alongside renewable output, mostly built for large utility-scale players in a handful of major markets. But a wind farm takes years to go from assessment to operation, so what matters is what the price signal looks like once the project is actually running, not today. Over that timeframe, you’re also guessing at fossil fuel policy shifts and what else might get built nearby before commissioning, since every new plant reshapes the local merit order again. That’s a harder problem than forecasting next week’s prices, and it’s where I think there’s real room to build something better suited to how long these projects actually take.

Where This Leaves Us

Curtailment and negative pricing aren’t a sign that renewables have failed. If anything, they’re a sign of how fast renewables have succeeded, faster, in places, than the grid’s flexibility has managed to catch up. Storage and demand-side tools like smart meters will keep chipping away at the mismatch from the system side. But from where I sit, the more interesting shift is happening at the project level: the industry is slowly moving from asking “how much energy will this site generate” to “how much will that energy actually be worth, in this specific place, at this specific time.” That’s not a fully solved problem yet, but it’s very much the direction wind resource assessment is heading, and it’s one I’d like to keep digging into.

Q&A

Q: What is curtailment in the context of wind and solar power? A: Curtailment is when a wind or solar project’s output is deliberately reduced or stopped, usually because there’s more electricity being generated than the grid needs or can absorb at that moment, making it uneconomical or technically unsafe to keep exporting power.

Q: Why do electricity prices sometimes go negative? A: Prices go negative when there’s more low-cost electricity available than demand at that hour, and generators would rather pay a small fee to keep running (for technical or subsidy-related reasons) than shut down entirely, or when they are financially incentivized to keep bidding to stay dispatched.

Q: What is capture price, and how is it different from the average wholesale price? A: Capture price is the actual average price a specific wind or solar project earns for the electricity it sells, based on when it generates. It can be meaningfully lower than the average wholesale price if a project tends to generate heavily during hours when the market is already oversupplied.

Q: Does more renewable energy always mean cheaper electricity? A: Only during the hours when renewable output is high. Wind and solar have near-zero marginal costs, so when they generate a lot at once, they can push prices down sharply for those specific hours, an effect known as price cannibalization.

Q: Can battery storage solve curtailment on its own? A: Storage helps significantly by absorbing surplus energy for later use, but it’s generally viewed as one part of the solution alongside demand-side flexibility (like smart meters and demand response), rather than a complete fix on its own.

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Disclaimer: The views expressed in this post are my own and do not represent the views, positions, or opinions of my employer. This post is written for general informational purposes and does not constitute investment, engineering, or financial advice.

Every time you send a message to an AI, you use roughly ten times more electricity than a regular internet search. Multiply that by hundreds of millions of people, and you start to understand why the world’s biggest technology companies are in a quiet panic about power. Data centres, the physical buildings that run artificial intelligence, are now projected to more than double their global electricity consumption by 2030, consuming nearly 945 TWh annually, with AI identified as the primary driver. The industry needs land, it needs water, and above all, it needs a lot of electricity, fast. Some engineers think offshore wind might solve all three problems at once. They might be right. But if we are not careful, we will repeat the same mistakes we made on land, just with saltwater involved.

Offshore wind-powered data centres sit at a genuinely interesting intersection of two of the most significant infrastructure stories of our time. The idea is simple in principle: place the data centre close to where the offshore wind energy is generated, use cold seawater for cooling instead of freshwater, and keep the whole operation away from the communities that have been increasingly and loudly saying they do not want this infrastructure near their homes, their farms, or their water supplies. China has already built the first commercial version of this. Western startups are preparing to follow. And the legal and regulatory frameworks that would govern any of it barely exist yet, anywhere in the world. That gap, between what engineers can build and what policymakers have prepared for, is what this blog is really about.

In this post, I will cover what China has already built, what the rest of the world is planning, why communities on land are pushing back so hard, and why, as a wind energy professional, I think the most important conversation right now is not about technology at all.

China Goes First

In late May 2026, Chinese engineers officially switched on the world’s first underwater data centre powered by offshore wind, off the coast of Shanghai in the Lin-gang Special Area. The facility uses seawater as a heat sink instead of freshwater, cuts land use by more than 90% compared to conventional data centres, and eliminates freshwater consumption entirely for cooling. The project is built on straightforward engineering logic: offshore wind generates electricity close to where the infrastructure sits, cold ocean water handles the thermal management for free, and the whole operation stays out of sight of communities who do not want it near their homes.

China is not alone for long. A US startup called Aikido Technologies is developing data centres embedded inside the ballast tanks of floating offshore wind turbines in the North Sea. Each tank can house a 3 to 4 MW data hall, giving each platform a combined compute capacity of 10 to 12 MW. A commercial project off the coast of the United Kingdom may follow in 2028. The CEO of Aikido, Sam Kanner, put the case plainly: “We have this power from the wind. We have free cooling. We think we can be quite cost competitive compared to conventional data-center solutions.” He has also drawn a parallel with the offshore oil and gas industry, arguing that the same logic of moving industrial infrastructure into the deep sea now applies to AI computing. I will come back to why that particular comparison deserves scrutiny.

What Is Happening on Land Explains Everything

A Gallup survey published in May 2026 found that 71% of US adults oppose construction of AI data centres in their local area, including nearly half who strongly oppose them. That makes data centres less popular with neighbouring communities than nuclear power plants. More than $64 billion in projects were delayed or cancelled between May 2024 and March 2025 due to organised opposition, a figure that continued rising sharply through 2025. Between April and June 2025 alone, 20 proposals valued at $98 billion across 11 states were blocked or delayed amid local opposition and state-level pushback, amounting to two thirds of all projects being tracked at the time. Moratorium bills targeting data centre construction are now spreading across multiple US states, with the number of states acting growing steadily through 2026.

This opposition is not irrational. The concerns are concrete. A single large-scale data centre can consume as much electricity as 100,000 homes. In California’s Imperial County, a hyperscale AI facility that would have been the state’s largest was initially approved, then reversed after months of backlash. The developer, having originally pledged to use recycled water, ended up suing the local water authority for 260 million gallons of Colorado River water each year, in one of California’s most water-stressed agricultural regions. The county declared a moratorium. The developer filed a lawsuit to overturn it.

Virginia, the world’s most data-centre-dense region, approved the nation’s first electricity tax on data centres this week, at 1.1 cents per kilowatt-hour, after years of residents bearing rising energy costs and noise from cooling systems and backup generators. Amazon, meanwhile, launched internal investigations into three of its own engineers who testified at a Seattle city council meeting in support of a data centre moratorium, during their off-hours, as private citizens. They were called into HR meetings and told they faced potential disciplinary action. A civil rights complaint has been filed.

University of Michigan researchers, working with the Michigan Environmental Justice Coalition, found that data centres frequently do not deliver the jobs and tax revenue promised to communities, while residents bear rising energy costs and environmental burdens they were given little say over. The grid is stressed too. Research from Texas A&M and Harvard found that training GPT-4 consumed an estimated 50 GWh of electricity, compared to 1.29 GWh for GPT-3, equivalent to nearly 0.1% of New York City’s annual electricity use. The scale of demand is growing faster than the governance frameworks designed to manage it.

Technology Moves Fast. Trust Does Not.

I want to say something that does not get said enough in conversations about AI infrastructure: Artificial Intelligence is genuinely new. Not new in the way smartphones were new, but new in the sense that the people designing it, building it, and running the infrastructure that powers it are themselves uncertain about what it will become and what it will cost. That uncertainty is not confined to the public. It extends to engineers, to researchers, and to the workers inside the companies building this technology who have, in some cases, been willing to risk their jobs to raise concerns about its expansion. Distrust of AI is not irrational. It is, in many ways, the appropriate response to a technology whose long-term footprint, including its energy and environmental footprint, is still being understood in real time. The question is not whether to engage with that distrust, but how to take it seriously rather than dismiss it.

This brings me to the offshore oil and gas parallel that Aikido’s CEO drew. The offshore oil and gas industry did achieve remarkable engineering feats moving infrastructure into the deep sea. It also gave us Deepwater Horizon, decades of regulatory capture, chronic methane leaks, and coastal communities bearing environmental risk while energy profits flowed elsewhere. If that is the model being held up as inspiration for AI data centre expansion, the governance conversation becomes more urgent, not less. The fact that something was done before does not make it a template worth repeating.

Here is what I would add specifically on the marine ecosystem question, because I think it is underappreciated. The ocean is not a separate system operating independently of the rest of the world. It regulates roughly half the oxygen we breathe, moderates global temperatures, and underpins food chains that billions of people depend on. If thermal discharge from undersea data centres creates localised warming that disrupts breeding cycles for marine species, that does not stay a marine problem. It becomes a food security concern, a livelihood concern for coastal communities, and eventually a public health concern. The idea that offshore means consequence-free relies on a view of the ocean as empty industrial space, which it simply is not. We are all downstream of the ocean, even those of us who have never seen it.

My position is this. The offshore route is worth exploring, precisely because it buys time, but only if that time is used to build the governance that the onshore route skipped entirely. A legal scholar at the University of Warsaw recently examined where underwater data centres sit in international law and concluded that existing frameworks covering vessels, sea platforms, and undersea cables do not clearly define what an underwater data centre is, who is responsible if it malfunctions, or what environmental standards it must meet. She found that current international maritime law may not be sufficient and that new regulation may be mandatory. She is right. But she is a legal scholar, not a policymaker. Engineers design the systems. Scientists identify the risks. Neither group has the power to make the decisions that actually determine what happens to the communities and ecosystems affected.

The Finnish model is instructive here. Research on a 21 MW data centre in the Ostrobothnia region found that when a facility was genuinely integrated into local infrastructure, supplying waste heat to district heating networks, it achieved a 36% reduction in district heating CO2 emissions and reduced heating costs by 19%. Local communities were broadly supportive, precisely because the facility delivered real and tangible local benefit. Not a promise of jobs that did not materialise. Not a lawsuit over river water. That is what genuine community integration looks like, and it requires governance before construction, not litigation after.

The sequence I would advocate for is straightforward. Deploy offshore, where the stakes of early-stage failure are lower for nearby human communities while environmental impacts can be monitored at pilot scale. Monitor rigorously, including marine ecosystems, thermal impact, grid integration, and economic viability. Publish the results openly. Build the legal and regulatory frameworks that currently do not exist. Earn the social licence. Then, and only then, come onshore, with evidence, with accountability, and with governance structures that protect communities rather than exploit them. The problem with AI infrastructure is not that engineers lack creativity. It is that the people making siting decisions, technology executives and investors, have almost no accountability to the communities affected by those decisions. Governance is what converts goodwill into binding obligation. Right now, that piece is almost entirely missing, offshore and onshore alike.

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So Where Does This Leave Us?

Offshore wind-powered data centres are a genuinely interesting idea whose time may be coming. China has shown it is technically possible. Western startups are preparing to test it at scale. The ocean offers real advantages that land cannot match right now. But the ocean is not empty, and out of sight should not mean out of accountability.

The communities pushing back on land are not anti-technology. They are asking reasonable questions about who bears the costs and who captures the benefits of a buildout reshaping electricity grids, water supplies, and landscapes at extraordinary speed. Those questions deserve answers, not lawsuits, not HR investigations, and not a pivot to the seabed that sidesteps the conversation entirely.

Q&A

Doesn’t putting data centres offshore just move the problem? Partly, yes, and that is worth being honest about. Marine ecosystems face real risks from thermal discharge, cable installation, and seabed disruption, and those risks connect to the rest of us through food systems, coastal economies, and global climate regulation. The argument for offshore is not that it is without consequence. It is that the early-stage scale is smaller, the distance from dense human populations creates more room to monitor and learn, and getting it wrong at a pilot scale is recoverable in a way that getting it wrong at commercial scale may not be. That only holds if proper environmental monitoring is mandated from the start, which requires governance that currently does not exist.

Why not just build more renewable-powered land data centres? This is the ideal outcome, and there is already evidence it can work. Research from Finland shows that when a data centre is genuinely integrated into local infrastructure and delivers real community benefit, local support follows. The problem is that the industry’s track record on community engagement has been poor, and trust, once lost, is slow to rebuild. The answer is not to abandon onshore development but to do it differently, with binding commitments, transparent reporting, and accountability structures that existed before the first shovel went in the ground.

As a wind energy professional, are you worried about data centres competing with wind energy for offshore space? Yes. Offshore wind development is already constrained by permitting timelines, grid connection queues, and competing uses of marine space including fishing, shipping, and conservation zones. Adding data centre infrastructure into that picture could either accelerate or complicate development depending entirely on how it is governed. What I do not want to see is the AI industry using offshore wind as a vehicle to bypass the planning and community engagement processes that wind developers have had to navigate for decades. The wind industry earned its social licence the hard way. It should not be handed away to power a technology that has not yet earned its own.

Is offshore wind actually capable of powering large-scale AI computing? At current turbine sizes, a single floating platform with integrated compute can support 12 to 15 MW of data hall capacity. For context, the largest land-based AI data centres operate at hundreds of megawatts. Offshore wind-powered computing is more likely to play a complementary role, handling specific AI workloads or serving as distributed edge computing, rather than replacing centralised facilities entirely. That is an honest description of where the technology sits right now, not a reason to dismiss it.

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The views expressed here are entirely my own and have no relation to my employer or any organisation I am affiliated with.

I stumbled upon this news recently and I was genuinely surprised. Not because of the findings, but because we are still having this conversation in 2026! Wind turbine health effects have been studied extensively for over a decade. Recently, a major study with data from over 120,000 households just confirmed what researchers have been saying for years: wind turbines, at standard distances from homes, do not cause meaningful harm to human health. And yet the fearmongering continues.

So here I am, doing my bit. Not to dismiss anyone’s concern, but to put the actual science in one place. Because I believe that if someone is genuinely worried, they deserve a clear answer, not a headline designed to scare them.

The short answer

Wind turbines, built at the distances required by planning regulations, do not cause cancer, do not cause serious illness, and are not responsible for a recognised medical syndrome. The main real effect is noise annoyance in some people living close by, and even that is heavily shaped by psychological factors rather than direct physical exposure. The 2026 PNAS study of more than 120,000 US households found no detectable adverse health outcomes from turbine exposure at typical distances.

In this post I go through the most common claims one by one, look at what the research on wind turbine health effects actually shows, and share my perspective as a wind resource analyst who works on these assessments professionally.

The basics: noise, shadow, and why they are regulated

Noise

Wind turbines make sound. As the blades rotate, they produce an aerodynamic swooshing sound, and the gearbox and generator inside the nacelle add a low mechanical hum. At the distances required by planning law in most countries, this typically registers at around 35 to 45 decibels at the nearest home. A quiet library sits at roughly 40 decibels. A normal conversation is around 60 decibels. Turbine noise at standard setback distances is closer to background noise than anything you would notice over a television.

Shadow flicker

As the sun moves across the sky, rotating turbine blades cast moving shadows. Near a window, this can create a flickering effect inside a home. It is real, it is predictable, and it is modelled in detail before a wind farm is built. Developers calculate the exact number of hours per year each neighbouring property will experience flicker, based on sun angles, turbine positions and local weather. Most countries cap this at around 30 hours per year at the nearest home. Automated blade-stop systems handle affected properties when needed.

The claims, and what the science says

Claim 1: Wind turbines cause cancer

This claim was first spread on social media and then amplified by Donald Trump at a Republican fundraiser in 2019, where he said “they say the noise causes cancer.” You can read exactly what he said and draw your own conclusions. He offered no evidence, because there is none.

There is no biological mechanism by which turbine noise or infrasound could cause cancer. No peer-reviewed study has ever found a link. The claim does not appear in any medical, epidemiological or toxicological literature. When Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, one of the strongest supporters of wind energy in the US, was asked about Trump’s comments, he called them “idiotic.”

Verdict: False. No evidence of any kind exists.

Claim 2: Infrasound from wind turbines makes you seriously ill

Infrasound refers to sound frequencies below 20 Hz, below the range of normal human hearing. Wind turbines do produce infrasound. The question is whether it harms you.

A 2021 systematic review published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, commissioned by the Swiss Federal Office for the Environment, reviewed all scientific literature on wind turbine sound and health published between 2017 and 2020. Their conclusion: no clear association between wind turbine sound levels and health effects other than annoyance could be confirmed. The literature did not show that low-frequency sound or infrasound causes extra harm beyond normal audible sound. A 2017 review reached the same conclusion.

Verdict: Not supported by controlled evidence.

Claim 3: Wind turbines destroy your sleep

Health Canada studied over 1,200 households near turbines and found no evidence linking turbine noise to any health outcome, including sleep disturbance. Higher quality studies consistently show no association. The 2026 PNAS study, the largest on this question, found no detectable effects on insomnia, depression, anxiety or headaches across 120,000 US households. Louder turbines do cause more annoyance in some people. Annoyance and sleep disruption are not the same thing.

Verdict: Sleep disruption is not causally linked to wind turbines at standard distances.

Claim 4: Shadow flicker causes seizures

This is perhaps the most frightening-sounding claim, and it has one of the clearest scientific answers.

Photosensitive epilepsy, the condition most people have in mind when they raise this concern, is triggered by flickering light at specific frequencies. Peer-reviewed research published in the journal Epilepsia, and a follow-up study by the same researchers, established that photosensitive seizures are typically triggered by flicker at rates of 3 to 30 Hz. Wind turbine blades rotate and cast shadow at roughly 0.5 to 1 Hz, well outside this range. An independent expert panel convened by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health reviewed the evidence and concluded that shadow flicker from wind turbines does not pose a seizure risk.

Verdict: False. Shadow flicker from wind turbines does not trigger seizures.

Claim 5: “Wind Turbine Syndrome” is a real medical diagnosis

It is not. Wind Turbine Syndrome does not appear in the International Classification of Diseases. It does not appear in any diagnostic manual used by clinicians. A 2023 review published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health found no scientific basis for the syndrome as a distinct clinical entity. Professor Simon Chapman of the University of Sydney, whose doctoral research examined the phenomenon in detail, described it as a communicated disease: one that spreads not through physical exposure but through information, expectation and fear.

The list of symptoms attributed to wind turbines online has grown to include back pain, herpes, multiple sclerosis, and accelerated ageing. None are supported by peer-reviewed evidence.

Verdict: Not a recognised medical condition.

The nocebo effect: what is actually happening

You have probably heard of the placebo effect. A person takes a sugar pill, believes it is medicine, and feels better. The nocebo effect is the exact opposite. A person believes something will harm them, and that belief alone produces real physical symptoms.

Researchers tested this directly with wind turbine infrasound. They split participants into two groups. One group was shown media content framing wind turbine infrasound as harmful. The other was shown content framing it as benign. Both groups were then exposed to the same infrasound. The group primed to expect harm reported worsening symptoms. The group primed to expect benefit reported feeling better.

The symptoms people experience near wind turbines are often real. I want to be clear about that. If you feel unwell and you live near a wind farm, your experience is valid and I am not dismissing it. But the evidence points strongly toward expectation shaped by misinformation as the cause, not physical damage from the turbines themselves.

That does not mean every complaint should automatically be dismissed as a nocebo effect.

If you live near a wind farm and feel the noise is too loud or the shadow flicker is excessive, you can and should complain. This is not a dead end. There have been many instances where developers are required to go back, redo the calculations, and verify whether the turbines are actually responsible for what is being reported. In a number of cases, governments and local authorities also intervene independently, deploying their own noise measuring equipment or commissioning their own shadow flicker assessments after the wind farm is operational. If turbines are found to be exceeding the permitted limits, they are curtailed, meaning their output is restricted or they are stopped during certain hours. And depending on the jurisdiction, financial penalties apply. The regulatory process does not end at planning approval. It continues…

A word from someone who does this for a living

Here is the nuance I want to acknowledge honestly.

If you live very close to a wind turbine, closer than the setback distances most countries require, noise at night could be genuinely annoying. Sustained annoyance affects sleep. Poor sleep affects everything else. I am not pretending that is nothing.

And I understand why communities sometimes feel unheard when a wind farm is proposed near their homes, particularly when consultation has been poor. That frustration is legitimate, even when the specific health fears are not supported by the evidence.

But the body of research is consistent. Across countries, study designs and sample sizes, wind turbines sited to proper planning criteria do not cause cancer, do not cause serious illness, and do not cause a syndrome. The annoyance that some people experience is real, but it is mediated far more by attitude toward the project and expectation than by the noise levels themselves. When communities are properly involved in decision-making early, annoyance rates drop significantly. That is one of the clearest findings in the literature, and it is something the industry needs to take more seriously.

Meanwhile, the proven health harms from burning fossil fuels are not a debate. They are not a claim that needs further study. They are happening right now, at scale, to real people.

Conclusion

We live in a time where a tweet can travel faster than a study, where a frightening headline gets shared thousands of times and the correction gets ignored. The wind industry is not perfect. No energy source is. But the specific health claims that circulate about wind turbines are not rooted in science. They are rooted in fear, and in many cases, in deliberate campaigns designed to slow down the clean energy transition.

Having spent few years working in this industry now, I have sat with the data, worked through the assessments, and seen how seriously noise and shadow flicker are treated before a single turbine goes up. And I have also seen how quickly that work gets ignored when someone posts a scary video online.

That is why I am writing this. Not because I think everyone who is worried is wrong to feel that way. But because worry deserves an honest answer, not more noise.

The science is not on the side of the fearmongering. It is on the side of the wind.

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Q&A

Do wind turbines make you sick?

No. The largest study ever conducted on this question, published in PNAS in 2026 with data from over 120,000 US households, found no detectable adverse health outcomes from wind turbines at typical exposure distances. Multiple systematic reviews across different countries reach the same conclusion.

Can wind turbine noise cause sleep problems?

At standard setback distances required by planning law, no causal link has been established between wind turbine noise and sleep disturbance in high-quality studies. Some people experience annoyance from turbine noise, particularly those who already oppose the wind project, and annoyance can affect sleep. But this is different from a direct physiological effect.

Do wind turbines cause cancer?

No. There is no scientific evidence of any kind linking wind turbines to cancer. No biological mechanism exists. No peer-reviewed study has ever found a connection.

What is Wind Turbine Syndrome?

Wind Turbine Syndrome is not a recognised medical diagnosis. It does not appear in any medical classification system or diagnostic manual. Researchers describe it as a communicated condition spread through expectation and misinformation rather than physical exposure, a phenomenon known as the nocebo effect.

Does shadow flicker from wind turbines cause seizures?

No. Photosensitive epilepsy is triggered by flicker at 3 to 30 Hz. Wind turbine blades flicker at around 0.5 to 1 Hz, which is far outside the range that affects the brain.

Are health concerns about wind turbines monitored?

Yes. Before any wind farm is built, noise and shadow flicker assessments are completed and independently verified by third-party consultants as part of the planning process. Projects that fail to meet regulatory criteria are not approved.

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The views expressed here are entirely my own and have no relation to my employer or any organisation I am affiliated with.

Ask anyone following the energy debate right now and you will get two completely opposite answers on wind energy costs, and both sides will have real data to back them up. One will point to record-low solar prices and plummeting battery costs. The other will point to rising electricity bills, turbine shortages, and grids under pressure. Here is the thing: they are both right. They are just measuring different things. As a wind resource analyst, I spend a lot of time with these numbers, and the picture is more interesting than either side admits.

This blog walks through each one, where the numbers come from, and what it all actually means.

What does IRENA’s new report actually say about wind and solar costs?

IRENA’s 2026 report on 24/7 renewables makes a claim that goes further than most: solar and wind paired with battery storage are now cost-competitive with fossil fuels, even when you need power around the clock. Not just during the day. Not just when the wind blows. All the time.

The framework they use is called “firm cost,” which prices in storage from the start so the comparison actually reflects what it costs to deliver power on demand. The numbers: firm solar-plus-storage now ranges from $54 to $82 per MWh in high-resource regions, against over $100/MWh for new gas globally and $70 to $85/MWh for new coal in China. Since 2010, solar PV costs have dropped 87%, onshore wind 55%, and battery storage 93%. IRENA projects a further 30% cost reduction by 2030 and 40% by 2035.

Why is this renewable energy cost report coming out now?

Because the debate has shifted, and IRENA knows it.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced the EU to scramble for alternatives to Russian gas, ending up with the US supplying 58% of EU LNG in 2025. Add surging electricity demand from AI and data centres, and energy security has become the dominant political concern across the continent.

The result is a genuine nuclear revival across Europe. Poland is building its first nuclear plant. The UK reached final investment decision on Sizewell C in July 2025. In March 2026, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen called turning away from nuclear “a strategic mistake for Europe.” IRENA’s report is, in part, a direct response to that momentum: before you pivot entirely, look at these numbers properly.

Is the criticism of wind and solar reliability costs fair?

Partly, yes. Professor Jan Emblemsvåg’s recent analysis argues that IRENA’s firm costs still undercount what a truly reliable renewables-based system costs at scale. His central example is the Dunkelflaute, a German term for extended periods of cold, still, overcast winter weather where both wind and solar can be effectively useless for days or weeks at a time. Batteries struggle to cover that kind of event. A multi-week, continent-wide shortfall is a fundamentally different challenge from shifting an evening peak. He is not wrong on the physics.

But here is where the comparison breaks down. IRENA is pricing a well-sited hybrid project in a good resource region. Emblemsvåg is pricing the cost of keeping the lights on across an entire continent during a worst-case multi-week weather event. These are not the same question. Treating them as if they are is exactly where most energy cost discussions go wrong.

What do battery storage costs actually look like in Europe today?

Ember’s October 2025 analysis, based on real auction data from Italy, Saudi Arabia, and India, puts utility-scale battery costs at $125/kWh outside China and the US. That breaks down to roughly $75/kWh for core battery equipment and $50/kWh for installation and grid connection. The levelised cost of storage has fallen to $65/MWh.

Because that cost applies only to the share of generation being stored and not all of it, shifting 50% of daytime solar to the evening adds just $33/MWh to the overall cost of that electricity. Against a global average solar price of $43/MWh in 2024, dispatchable solar-plus-storage comes to roughly $76/MWh. That is not a projection. That is today’s auction data from real projects.

It is worth being clear about what batteries are actually for here. In practice, modern grids do not rely on a single backup technology. The real toolkit is cross-border interconnectors, demand response, pumped hydro, green hydrogen, and firm dispatchable capacity working together. Batteries are excellent at shifting daily peaks. They are one tool among many, not a silver bullet, and no major grid operator is expecting batteries alone to solve seasonal shortfalls.

Three costs, three different stories

This is the part most energy debates skip entirely. Here is how all three numbers sit side by side:

When someone tells you wind energy is getting cheaper, ask which column they are looking at.

So why are offshore wind turbine prices going up if renewables are getting cheaper?

Because project economics and turbine procurement costs are not the same thing. According to Rystad Energy, offshore wind turbine selling prices have risen roughly 40 to 45% since 2020 in Europe. Following technical setbacks at one major manufacturer, the European market is now effectively served by two dominant suppliers for nacelles and blades. Less competition means more pricing power.

This is a supply chain concentration problem, not a technology problem. But it is real, and it matters. The cost of wind energy is not one number. It is a project-level number, a system-level number, and a supply chain number, and they can all move in different directions simultaneously.

What is the right conclusion on wind energy costs?

Not “renewables win” and not “nuclear wins.” Both framings miss the point entirely.

The smartest actors in this space are not choosing sides. Tech companies scaling AI data centres are signing wind and solar PPAs while co-investing in nuclear restarts and Small Modular Reactors. China is simultaneously deploying the world’s largest renewables fleet and leading global nuclear construction. Nuclear capacity is likely to expand, and it should be part of the mix. The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists noted in March 2026 that only France currently has the industrial capacity to build large-scale reactors at pace across Europe, which means it cannot be the whole answer on its own.

If it is windy, build turbines. If it is sunny, build solar. If you need low-carbon firm dispatchable power independent of weather conditions, build nuclear too. These are complements. The countries building all of it now will be in the best position in twenty years. The debate about which source is cheapest is worth having. Just not as a reason to wait.

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Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Dunkelflaute and why does it matter for wind energy?

Dunkelflaute is a German term for extended periods of cold, still, overcast winter weather where both wind and solar output can drop to near zero for days or weeks at a time. It is the main challenge for a grid relying heavily on variable renewables, and it is why battery storage alone is not sufficient. The real solution involves interconnectors, demand response, pumped hydro, and firm dispatchable capacity working together.

Why are offshore wind turbine prices rising in Europe in 2026?

Following technical setbacks at one major manufacturer, the European offshore wind market is now served by essentially two dominant suppliers for nacelles and blades. Less competition gives manufacturers more pricing power, pushing turbine selling prices up roughly 40-45% since 2020.

Should Europe build more wind farms or more nuclear plants?

Both. The countries making the most progress on energy security are not choosing between renewables and nuclear — they are building all of it simultaneously. China leads the world in both new renewables deployment and new nuclear construction. Tech companies financing AI data centres are signing wind and solar PPAs while also investing in nuclear restarts and Small Modular Reactors.

Disclaimer: All views expressed here are entirely my own and do not represent the views, positions, or opinions of my employer or any organisation I am professionally affiliated with.

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Climate change and its impact on wind energy, particularly on wind speeds and turbine performance, is increasingly being debated. A recent Euronews article asked whether renewable energy can withstand a worsening climate. For solar, the concern centres on heat reducing panel efficiency. For wind, it raises something more counterintuitive: can there be too much wind for turbines to handle? The short answer is that average wind speeds are not collapsing, but climate change is shifting the frequency of extreme wind events, which means more turbine shutdowns, not a disappearing resource.

Understanding precisely what climate change does and does not do to wind energy is more useful than either panic or dismissal. That story is more interesting, and more reassuring, than the headline implies.

This article looks at how climate change is affecting wind speeds, extreme wind events, and what that means for wind energy generation.

What Is Happening to Average Wind Speeds

The most important starting point is also the least dramatic one: average wind speeds are not collapsing.

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is direct on this. Observed trends in mean surface wind speed exist in many areas, but their emergence from natural interannual variability and their attribution to human-induced climate change remains of low confidence. Looking ahead, there is limited evidence of emerging trends in mean wind speeds, partly due to a lack of studies quantifying wind speed changes against interannual variability. Where projections do exist, mean winds are expected to slightly decrease by 2050 over much of Europe, Asia and western North America, and increase in parts of South America, west and south Africa, and the eastern Mediterranean, all at medium confidence.

The European Environment Agency puts it plainly for the European context: there is no firm evidence from past data or model projections of major changes in mean wind speed, although the latest data hint at moderately decreasing wind speeds in southern and northern Europe.

From a system planning perspective, Tobin et al. (2015) assessed an ensemble of 15 regional climate projections and found that projected changes in wind power potential are generally within plus or minus 15 to 20 percent over Europe. Their conclusion was that climate change should neither undermine nor fundamentally threaten wind energy development across the continent.

Solaun and Cerdá offer a broader country-level perspective, surveying how climate change may affect renewable energy resources including wind across different regions, reinforcing that the picture varies considerably depending on location.

What Is Actually Changing: Extremes and Storm Behaviour

If average conditions are relatively stable, where does climate change genuinely matter for wind energy?

The answer lies in how storm systems and extreme wind events are evolving. A study published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science provides a clear signal: while the total number of midlatitude cyclones is projected to decrease by roughly 4 percent, the proportion of cyclone-associated extreme wind speed events increases by around 10 percent in a warmer climate. Northwestern Europe, the British Isles, and the west coast of North America are identified as hotspots with the greatest socioeconomic impacts from increased cyclone-associated extreme winds.

Regional modelling studies of offshore wind systems show similar patterns. A EURO-CORDEX based analysis of North Sea and Irish Sea wind farms found a slight decrease in wind energy production particularly in the northwest of the study domain, while extreme wind conditions show a modest rise in the southeastern part of the region, linked to an increase in cyclonic weather systems off Scotland’s shores. The study also flags large uncertainties in projected changes at wind farms close to the south coast of the North Sea.

The European Environment Agency is candid about the limits of current knowledge here: limited data and inherent weaknesses in climate models make projections for extreme wind more uncertain than for other climate hazards. That said, there is moderate confidence that the frequency and intensity of storms will increase in northern and central Europe, while in southern Europe storm intensity is expected to increase even as their frequency decreases.

Why More Wind Is Not Always More Power

The Euronews headline points at something real, but overstates the risk.

Wind turbines generally operate between wind speeds of around 3 and 25 m/s. Below that lower threshold there is not enough energy to generate power. Above the upper threshold, turbines shut down deliberately to protect themselves from structural damage. This is not a failure. It is exactly what they are designed to do.

What this means in practice is that stronger winds do not automatically translate into more electricity. More frequent extreme wind events can actually increase the number of hours turbines spend in protective shutdown, reducing overall generation. Climate change does not remove the wind resource. It changes how often conditions fall within the range where turbines can safely and productively operate.

What This Means for Wind Energy Planning

Wind resource assessment has always accounted for variability. It already considers extreme winds, operational limits, and inter-annual fluctuations. What is changing is the need to look forward more explicitly. Historical data alone is no longer sufficient as a planning baseline. Climate projections are increasingly being integrated into site assessment, turbine selection, and long-term yield modelling.

Institutions working on the data infrastructure side are keeping pace. Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) and DTU Wind and Energy Systems are at the forefront of improving the models and datasets that underpin this kind of forward-looking assessment, ensuring the tools available to the industry remain as accurate and physically realistic as possible. Initiatives like nextGEMS, which run kilometre-scale climate models, are pushing this further by simulating storm systems and atmospheric dynamics at the scale of an individual wind farm.

And the outlook for wind energy as a whole remains strongly positive. WindEurope expects Europe to install 151 GW of new wind capacity between 2026 and 2030, which would bring total installations across Europe to 439 GW by 2030. The constraints on that growth are permitting timelines and grid connection queues, not atmospheric physics.

It is a sign of a field evolving with better data, better tools, and a more honest understanding of the atmosphere it operates in.

The Bottom Line

Wind energy is not in danger from climate change. What is changing is our understanding of atmospheric behaviour, and the industry is adapting its planning tools accordingly.

The evidence across major institutions and peer-reviewed studies points in the same direction. Average wind resources remain broadly stable within a range of regional variation. Extremes and variability deserve closer attention and are already receiving it.

That is not a reason to panic. This is not a failing resource. It is a system that needs better planning.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does climate change reduce average wind speeds?

The IPCC and European Environment Agency both conclude that there is no firm evidence of major changes in mean wind speed from past data or model projections. Where projections exist, changes are modest, regionally variable, and carry medium to low confidence. Wind resource viability as a whole is not undermined.

Can there really be too much wind for wind turbines?

Yes. Turbines are designed to shut down when wind speeds exceed their safe operating range, typically above around 25 metres per second. This is a deliberate design feature. More frequent extreme wind events could increase shutdown periods and reduce generation in affected regions, but this does not make wind energy unviable.

Is storm activity increasing in Europe?

Research published in npj Climate and Atmospheric Science projects that while the total number of midlatitude cyclones decreases slightly, the proportion associated with extreme wind speed events increases by around 10 percent in a warmer climate. Northwestern Europe and the British Isles are identified as areas of particular concern.

How is the industry adapting to a changing climate?

By integrating climate projections into site assessment and long-term yield modelling rather than relying solely on historical wind data. Institutions like C3S, DTU Wind, and initiatives like nextGEMS are improving the models and datasets that make this possible.

The views expressed here are my own and do not represent my employer or any affiliated organisation.

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