Onshore Wind and Solar Generation

Debate between Andrew Bowie and Harriet Cross

Wednesday 2nd April 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

In just four short weeks, people across England will go to the polls to determine the future of their local communities. At that same time, the Labour party seeks to impose on those very same communities vast new energy infrastructure: huge solar farms and wind turbines with blade heights of 180 metres to 200 metres, destroying swathes of England’s green and pleasant land and going against the wishes of local people. As ever, only the Conservative party is standing up for those communities, and only the Conservative party believes that people in those communities should have a say over their local area. Labour would silence those communities, choosing to impose rather than to seek consent. In four weeks’ time, voters across this country will have that choice before them.

The order provides a route to approval for onshore wind that entirely bypasses the consent of local communities and empowers the zealotry of the Secretary of State to impose infrastructure irrespective of the concerns of local people.

[Harriet Cross (Gordon and Buchan) (Con)]

In my constituency of Gordon and Buchan, the Suie and Correen hills are subject to a planning application for a new onshore wind farm. There is also concern that, because of that, there will be new pop-up infrastructure next to it, whether substations or batteries and so on. One project leads to another and then to another—it overtakes local communities, it means that local landscapes and local businesses change, and there is an impact on farming, too. Does my hon. Friend agree that such projects cannot be looked at in isolation? This has to be about their holistic impact across the board, not just about the individual scheme, one at a time.

[Andrew Bowie]

I could not agree more with my hon. Friend, living, as we do, in the north-east of Scotland and seeing around us the huge increase in energy infrastructure planned for rural communities over the next few years—it is quite daunting. It is therefore no surprise that there has been such vociferous campaigning against the plans, whether those for wind turbines, pylons, energy substations or battery storage facilities, all of which are in the pipeline for our communities. That is why there is such a pushback there and also such concern across many of the communities that will be affected by the change in England over the next few years. That is why we oppose the SI before us.

In their first week in office, the Government approved three solar farms across Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and Rutland, against the wishes of the local communities. Today, the Minister seeks to go further still. In increasing the threshold for solar, he pushes for the development of giant solar farms. To be eligible for sign-off by the Secretary of State, solar farms have to be 100 MW in capacity. Currently, the largest—Shotwick solar park in Flintshire—is 72 MW. The change signals a free-for-all for giant-scale solar, and the instrument brings onshore wind over a 100 MW capacity into the NSIP scope. In Lancashire, that means Scout Moor II being in the Secretary of State’s gift to approve. Calderdale wind farm, with 65 turbines covering 9 square miles, is planned for Yorkshire and will be built on grouse moorland and farmland. In Lincolnshire’s prime agricultural land, the breadbasket of England, this means a potential onslaught of proposals, despite the county council’s opposition to large-scale plans.

I know how much this means to local communities—my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon and Buchan (Harriet Cross) has also made this point. I represent a constituency that is being subjected to vast swathes of energy infrastructure, and over the next few years approval will be sought for a whole host of new plans that will indelibly change a landscape that people are proud and happy to live in right now.

Great British Energy Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Andrew Bowie and Harriet Cross

Committee stage
Thursday 10th October 2024 Public Bill Committees

[Harriet Cross]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the supply chains that we have are used to delivering large-scale multimillion-pound projects? That is important not only for home-grown jobs, but for the success of GB Energy and any infrastructure and skills that will come out of it. We need our home-grown supply chain, which is world renowned, to help deliver this.

[Andrew Bowie]

My hon. Friend and constituency neighbour is absolutely right. I completely agree. She is a doughty champion for supply chain jobs based in her constituency, in mine, in that of the right hon. Member for Aberdeen South and in others across the country. One reason that we have been so critical of this Labour Government’s North sea policies—the extension and increase of the energy profits levy, the removal of investment allowances, the removal of further licences in the North sea—is the impact on the domestic supply chain jobs that exist already and, by the way, on the high-skilled jobs that will deliver the cleaner energy future that we all want to get to.

That is why I and others in Committee have been so critical in the past—it is not that we do not want to see the transition; it is that we want the oil and gas industry, and those people in the supply chain who are employed by it now, to be a part of that transition. Without a successful domestic oil and gas industry or domestic supply chain, we will not deliver any of the projects that we are speaking so glowingly about in Committee and over the past few weeks, months and years. As my hon. Friend the Member for Gordon and Buchan says, it is critical for the supply chain to support net zero transition.

Security of supply chain is absolutely relevant to the objectives of GB Energy and should be included as a strategic priority, hence the amendment. I also tabled amendment 18, which would introduce the direction for GB Energy to report to the Secretary of State on the progress being made towards developing domestic supply chains.