Energy: Onshore Wind Farming

Lord Shipley Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Shipley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, for initiating this debate.

I received a few days ago a copy of the National Trust members’ magazine. In it was an article entitled Powering the Future. It talked of the role of that great industrialist and inventor Lord Armstrong, who introduced renewable energy to his home at Cragside in Northumberland, which is now owned by the trust. It was encouraging to read of the National Trust’s pledge to generate 50% of its energy use from renewable sources by 2020. I was also pleased to read the comment against a photograph of wind turbines on the Cumbrian coast near Whitehaven which said that,

“the trust supports the sensitive use of renewables such as wind turbines”.

I agree with the National Trust. The crucial word here is “sensitive”, which is at the heart of the debate. We should not allow visually intrusive development in areas of outstanding natural beauty. We should not lose the tranquillity that Northumberland is renowned for, and we should not damage tourism, which is such a fundamental part of Northumberland’s economy. I am pleased that Northumberland County Council is doing an impact study of wind farms on tourism to assess the perceptions of visitors.

The north-east like all regions needs to play its part in energy generation. However, I am grateful to the Campaign to Protect Rural England and to the Northumberland and Newcastle Society for pointing out in a letter earlier this year that while they are supportive of the development of renewable energy they feel that too many wind farms are being built in Northumberland, which has twice the megawatt consents for onshore wind generation of the nine home counties put together. They have a point; the wind does blow in the home counties.

We have to think very carefully, however, about energy security. I do not want the lights to go out and so I believe that we need to promote every form of sustainable energy that we can. We should note that last year, onshore wind turbines produced 5% of our electricity. They help to keep the lights on, supplying 3 million homes. A recent poll I saw showed that two-thirds of people support onshore wind energy production. However, as has been pointed out this evening, local people quite rightly want a bigger say over where onshore wind installations are permitted, and I am pleased that the Government have responded, delivering a fivefold increase in the benefits that communities in England can receive worth up to £100,000 per year for a medium-sized development. The crude block on onshore wind energy that some are calling for would seriously risk investment in the UK’s renewable energy market, which has the potential to create 200,000 new green jobs by 2020.

There are very few sources of energy that do not arouse strong opposition. Nuclear, wind and shale all have active opposition, but banning wind farms would drive up consumers’ energy bills because onshore wind is the cheapest type of renewable energy. At the same time, we have to protect our natural environment, so we need a balance between keeping the lights on and protecting areas of natural beauty.

In conclusion, I hope that the Minister will think carefully about what has been said this evening and I hope that it will be possible to have the discussion that the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, asked for. I find it hard to understand why Northumberland is producing 10% of onshore power while consuming well under 1% of the electricity generated by onshore wind. We have heard very clearly what the impact has been in some areas of outstanding natural beauty in Northumberland, and I hope that the Minister will take note.