Partner Article

Wind farm ad 'misleading'

A power company advertisement which used images of a planned North East wind farm has been deemed “likely to mislead”.

E.ON’s TV ad and other promotional material for the proposed West Ancroft wind farm development in Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland, showed turbines that were only half the size of the ones planned, the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) said.

“Because of the disparity in size between the image and the turbines proposed for the West Ancroft site, we concluded that the ads were likely to mislead,” it said.

The firm also used a sequence of photos which showed the proposed development from a viewpoint “several kilometres from the proposed site”, reducing its visual impact on the landscape.

The ASA found the images were “not sufficiently representative of the likely impact in those areas” and concluded that the advert was “likely to mislead”.

E.ON told the ASA they used “images of one of their existing wind farms on invitations to provide a general, eye-catching image of renewable energy”.

An E.ON UK spokesman said: “This is the first time that we have been ruled against by the ASA on a wind farm advertisement.

“We had no intention to mislead people and were trying to represent how a generic wind farm would look. As a result of this ruling we are now reviewing our procedures going forward to ensure that this does not happen again.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .