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Challenge Navitus

The coast from Purbeck in Dorset to the south of the Isle of Wight surrounding Poole Bay is rightly valued. Expansive views escape the intrusion of man-made structures, and it is a popular destination for those wanting to “get away from it all”. That could change if the Navitus Bay offshore wind farm is built by Dutch & French companies, Eneco & EDF (Navitus Bay Development Limited) as it is currently proposed.

The offshore wind farm would lie between Purbeck and the Isle of Wight, to the south of a line from St. Aldhelm's Head to St. Catherine's Point. It would occupy an area about the same size as the Isle of Purbeck, and contain up to 218 turbines depending on the size of each turbine;  turbines up to 200m (656ft) tall are currently envisaged. It would be highly visible from all around the region, but especially from Durlston, Swanage, Sandbanks, Bournemouth, Hengistbury Head and the Needles area of the Isle of Wight.   It would be

• Embedded in a valuable national asset with an economy supported by its natural beauty and the sea
  
• Overlooked by two Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty and a National Park
  
• Close to England’s only natural World Heritage Site
  
• Closer than government recommendations for coasts of high sensitivity
  
• Closer than similar developments in Europe
  
• In the mouth of a bay, overlooked by hills and cliffs
  
• On an important international bird migration route
  
• In an area of high shipping and boating activity
  
• Surrounded by coastal ecology sensitive to micro-climate change
  
• Close to sea-bird colonies and in an area currently frequented by marine mammals

Challenge Navitus is a campaigning group of members of the public with three main aims

1. to provide accurate information beyond what the developer is presenting,
   
2. to stop the proposal in its current form, and
   
3. to create a discussion of alternative solutions for this windfarm.
   

We are not against renewable energy and not necessarily opposed to offshore windfarms. But not every renewable energy project is well-conceived or well-designed.  We have great reservations about the location and size of Navitus Bay Development Limited's proposal. We plan to explain our objections in this website. Refer to why challenge it? for more information.  If you want to give your opinions on the development, click here.  We rely on donations to continue our work on this wind farm proposal, so if you support what we are doing, every contribution, however small, would be greatly appreciated.  If you would like to make a donation then please go to Donations.

We try to be as factual as possible and we have carefully researched the material for this site about the Navitus Bay offshore wind farm, but mistakes are always possible. If you spot one, please let us know.  We will be adding new material to this site all the time, so please visit us again.

Videos

We have prepared some animations to show what the proposed Navitus wind farm might look like using computer graphics.  We have taken great care to make these animations as accurate as possible. They have been independently checked with professional digital terrain modelling software so we are confident that the scales are correct. We have now added High Definition versions of videos for those of you with the right hardware and a fast internet connection See videos here.

Banner Photographs

As with most websites, our banner photographs are just meant to add visual interest to the site.  They are not intended to be calibrated scenes, and as such most carry no scale information.  

The computer simulations and some diagrams, on the other hand, do contain scale information so you can view them at the correct distance to get an accurate "life-size" representation of the wind farm and offshore wind turbines.

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