Vote:

No to wind turbine in Switzerland

Relief spread on Sunday evening among wind turbine opponents on both sides of the Rhine.(Bild: IG Gegenwind)

Only four votes made the difference: the citizens of Au voted against the project on the border with Vorarlberg. Opponents had feared that it would also affect Lustenau.

Wind turbine opponents can breathe a sigh of relief: following the referendum in neighboring Au, the 220-meter-high wind turbine planned by the SFS Group is history. Exactly 1044 citizens (50.1 percent) voted against the project in Au on Sunday. In contrast, 1040 residents of Au had no objections to the construction of the wind turbine without the minimum distance of 500 meters to residential buildings. The turnout was 48.59 percent. In the run-up to the vote, initiatives against the project had formed in both Au and Lustenau. The wind turbine opponents had feared negative consequences from not keeping the minimum distance to the residential area and warned of noise, shadows and falling property values.

Success for the small IG
The people of Lustenau had already collected the first signatures and handed them over to their colleagues in Switzerland. There, fellow campaigners from "IG Gegenwind" were delighted with the result of the vote on Sunday. "The result is a defeat not only for the SFS and the wind lobby, but also for the canton of St. Gallen, which wanted to rush the site into the structure plan without informing the population sufficiently," said a press release from the wind turbine opponents. The success was sensational and all the more significant as the small "IG Gegenwind" would have faced a broad and financially strong superiority. 

The result has no influence on the other planned wind farms in the neighboring canton of St. Gallen. 15 possible sites have been entered in a structure plan. Between nine and twelve turbines are to be erected by 2025, which will then generate around 300 gigawatt hours of electricity.