Energy: Wind Farms

Lord Thomas of Gresford Excerpts

Wednesday 9th November 2011 Lords Chamber

Asked By

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the impact of current and proposed wind farms and their supporting infrastructures on the communities and landscape of mid-Wales and Shropshire.

[Lord Thomas of Gresford]

My Lords, I welcome and congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Stowell, on her first venture to the Dispatch Box. It is a pleasure to see her responding to this debate. I declare an interest as a former president of the Montgomeryshire Society with strong links to the Vrynwy and Meifod valleys. Together with my noble friend Lord Hooson I was engaged in resisting successfully the proposals to drown the Dulas valley near Llanidloes in the early 1970s to provide a regulating reservoir for Birmingham.

Two or three years ago my noble friend Lady Walmsley—my wife—and I visited a school in Llanfair Caereinion to present prizes given by the Montgomeryshire Society. While we were congratulating a bright young boy on the excellent prize he had won, I asked him, “What are your plans when you leave school?”. He said he wanted to be a farmer. I asked whether it was sheep, cattle or arable farming that he had in mind. “No,” he said, “Wind farming”.

This is a timely debate, having regard to the KPMG report Thinking About the Affordable published this week. The report says that government plans for wind farms are too expensive and should be shelved in favour of cheaper nuclear and gas-fired power stations. Government plans to cut pollution by a third by 2020 rest heavily on wind power and will cost £108 billion to implement. The report says that shifting away from turbines towards nuclear and gas-fired power stations would slash the bill by £34 billion, which is equal to around £550 for every person in this country. Wind power is accordingly one of the most expensive forms of electricity generation to build. Wind farms are expensive to operate as they depend on nature, which means they often do not run at full capacity. It is claimed that they run at 31 per cent of capacity but analysis of past performance in the UK suggests that 21 per cent is nearer to the truth. I would be grateful to hear from the Minister the Government’s reaction to this report.

In 2005 the Welsh Assembly Government issued TAN 8, the technical advice note meant to guide planning decisions relating to renewable energy projects. TAN 8 identified seven strategic search areas as suitable for concentrated, large-scale wind farm development, three of which were in mid-Wales. The focus is on mid-Wales because Snowdonia National Park lies to the north and Brecon Beacons National Park to the south. Targets for capacity have varied from 1.1 gigawatts originally to 2.5 gigawatts in 2007, falling back to 2 gigawatts in 2010, all to be constructed within the SSAs by 2015.

In mid-Wales, schemes have been proposed for 800 turbines up to 600 feet tall, spreading through the Severn valley and into the hills above the Meifod and Vyrnwy valleys. Of course, there are no connections to the national grid in the area so these schemes require a network of electricity pylons, running to a substation at either Abermule or Cefn Coch, spread over some 28 acres. That substation will require a link of 154-feet-tall mega-pylons across the rest of Montgomeryshire and into England, all the way through Shropshire to Telford some 45 miles away. There are currently some 200 pylons in existence in Powys. ScottishPower Renewables is into the second phase of its proposals to build a 135-megawatt wind farm of 35 pylons—the highest in Europe at 600 feet—on land that it has leased from the Forestry Commission in the Dyfnant forest. They will tower over Lake Vyrnwy and the beautiful countryside around. In response to the proposal for these pylons put forward by ScottishPower and National Grid, some 500 people turned up to a protest meeting at the Meifod rugby club—and this is a very small village—at the end of March. In May the biggest protest demonstration in the Welsh Assembly’s history took place in Cardiff with some 2,000 people. In Welshpool in June, 2,000 people attended to protest and to watch on a large screen the proceedings of Powys County Council where a motion calling for the review of the TAN 8 policy was passed unanimously with only one abstention. Shropshire County Council has also declared itself to be unanimously against this proposal and all the parish councils involved have expressed their opposition. As a result of all this pressure Carwyn Jones, the Welsh Assembly Government’s First Minister, realised finally what the previous Government had let loose with TAN 8 and in a reversal of previous policy said on 17 June:

“Planning guidelines on the number of wind farms should in future be regarded as an upper limit. The Welsh Government wants the UK government to devolve powers over large-scale energy generation projects. We cannot accept a position where decisions made outside Wales will lead to inappropriate development for the people of Wales. The Welsh Government believe this level of development is unacceptable in view of its wider impacts on the local area”.

Mr Jones hoped that the United Kingdom Government would respect his announcement and would not allow proliferation when they take decisions on individual projects in Wales. He concluded by saying:

“My government would not support the construction of large pylons in mid-Wales and my ministers are pressing this case with National Grid Transmission and with Ofgem”.

What is this Government’s response? They have rejected Mr Jones’s demand for further devolution but surely the Department of Energy and Climate Change will not ride roughshod over the express will of parish councils, county councils, the Welsh Assembly Government and, most importantly, the whole community of Montgomeryshire, Shropshire and beyond. According to the Telegraph on 9 October a spokesman for DECC said:

“All applications for wind farm developments and electricity network infrastructure should be dealt with on a case by case basis, taking into account the views of local people”.

Who exactly is going to deal with these applications? Name the Minister. Who will balance the antagonism of local people, the expressed hostility of their representatives, the obvious environmental considerations, and the impact on tourism and the local economy against the expensive and limited capacity for generating electricity that these wind farms possess? The impact on the people and the beautiful countryside will be devastating. I do not share the gleam in the eye of those who try to tell us that turbines are a thing of beauty. It is all a question of proportion. The countryside can absorb a certain number of these structures. Indeed, in Dulas valley near Machynlleth, the first community-owned wind turbine in the United Kingdom was erected in 2003 and serves the local population, who own it, very well. But 800 turbines in the area proposed will be completely and wholly out of proportion. If localism means anything at all to this Government, the ruination of the hills should be taken by bodies that are accountable locally.

For those who think that mid-Wales is an empty and barren land that does not matter, I advise them to read the report commissioned during the Dulas valley inquiry of 1970 from the University of Aberystwyth, which stressed the value of the strong community life, the strength of the culture and the human effects of the proposed development upon a mid-Wales community. At that time, the Secretary of State for Wales, Lord Cledwyn, determined and announced that no Welsh valley would be sacrificed again. It is time for the Secretary of State for Wales in the present Government to step in and to follow that precedent.