PLANS to put a 32ft wind turbine in a supermarket car park have failed to stir councillors.

Tesco has formally applied for permission to put in a WindRotor at its store in St Peter’s Drive, St Peter’s, Worcester, in a bid to become more eco-friendly.

However, members of St Peter’s Parish Council branded proposals to build the 10.6m-high turbine ‘mad’ and a ‘pure PR exercise’. A spokesman for the supermarket giant said the ‘noiseless’ turbine would form part of its pledge to reduce by half the 2006 carbon output of every square metre of store space by 2020.

If built, the wind turbine could generate up to 6kw of power at full capacity which is enough to power four average UK households.

But Ross McFarlane, parish council chairman, said he did not believe Worcester was windy enough to generate that amount of power.

He said: “I think 6kw checking is about 36 metres per second but I am sure the average wind speed around here is about five metres per second which would put turbine output at about 0.5kw.”

Fellow councillor Richard Fowler said he was concerned about noise despite plans stating the turbine would not have an “unacceptable impact”.

Coun Roger Knight said: “It’s a pure PR exercise. I think it’s a big expense initially with no return for Tesco.”

A Tesco spokesman said site studies had shown there was enough wind to power the turbine, which is the same design as the Tesco is proposing to put on the car park of its Warndon Villages store.

He added the scheme would be ‘a pretty expensive white elephant’ and would not be worth applying for if the company did not think it would be of any benefit.

He said: “We’ve got 1,700 stores across the UK so we’re not going to be able to build our way out of that and hit our carbon targets.

“We’ve got to work with the existing stores that we have and this turbine is one of the ways to do that.

“Every five years our stores have a refresh and we apply a shopping list of environmental measures to those stores to update them, which can include better insulation, ventilation, lighting and adjusting refrigeration.”

He said he could not reveal the cost of the turbine on grounds that it could be ‘commercially sensitive.’ Members voted to object to the turbine on grounds of noise and that the turbine could “interfere with mobile phone signals” according to councillor Paul Thorlby.

The plans are up for consultation until Monday, April 27.