Onshore Wind Energy

Andrew George Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Andrea Leadsom]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend that that is outrageous.

One of the biggest criticisms about the planning system for onshore wind farms is that there is no requirement, at the moment, for the developer to prove that the place is actually windy. You would think, Mr Walker, that before the taxpayer was expected to fork out billions of pounds someone would require the developer to find—as Winnie the Pooh put it—a windy spot. It is a fairly basic requirement. That brings me on to South Northamptonshire, which is not a windy spot—other than my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), who, I am told, can be full of wind at times. [Interruption.] Yes, hot air.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

Before the hon. Lady moves on geographically—I come from a totally different part of the country—let me congratulate her on the way in which she has constructed a very strong argument against wind energy, although it is not one that I entirely sign up to. However, I feel that she has overplayed the negatives. Turbines, for example, are not operational for about 100 hours a year as a result of strong winds. She has also rather underplayed the economic benefits to the manufacturing sector in the UK. Does she not agree with the way in which this Government are approaching this issue? They are constructing incentives for communities to benefit from wind farms rather than simply having them established in the landscape with no benefit to the local community. Does she think that that might help to change people’s attitudes towards them?

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Order. Many colleagues want to speak. Can we have pithy interventions?

[Andrea Leadsom]

Absolutely. As I said earlier, I completely applaud the Government’s intention to enable communities to share in the benefits of wind farms; it is absolutely right. It should have been done before now. I completely agree that where wind farms go ahead, communities should benefit. None the less, I slightly take issue with the point that my hon. Friend made about the amount of time that wind turbines are actually working. The latest statistics show that, on average in the UK, they operate between 25% and 30% of the time.

[Andrew George]

The figures across the board show that the turbines operate about 70% to 80% of the time. About 100 hours are lost when they have to be shut down as a result of excessive wind speeds. That is 100 hours a year per turbine.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I thank my hon. Friend for that, but I think that we are talking about two slightly different things. I am talking about 30% of wind farm capacity being effective at any one time.

I move on to my own constituency of South Northamptonshire. The Met Office confirms that it is one of the most sheltered parts of the UK. Our average wind speed is around 8 knots, which means that we are towards the lower end of effective speeds for a wind turbine. Nevertheless, I have four applications for wind turbines in my constituency—one in Greatworth and Helmdon, one in Roade, one in Alderton and one very recently in Paulerspury. A local study suggests that the capacity of the wind turbines would be around 19%, which is extremely low. We will, none the less, face massive disruption during construction.

Having spoken to a number of developers, I am told that the factors that attracted them to South Northamptonshire were the excellent roads, the convenience of the sites to the motorways, the good links to the grid, and the ROCs. They did not say that they were attracted to Northamptonshire because it is an exceptionally windy place. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on today’s announcement, which he kindly sent to my office this morning. It said that the Government will consider giving wind farm developers a new incentive to build in windy places rather than in constituencies such as mine where there really is not enough wind to be worth the cost.

--- Later in debate ---

[Tony Cunningham]

Anything that helps to support people locally—anything that gives greater power to local people—must be welcomed, although if we imagine a different scenario, in which local people say that they do not want a nuclear power station, we would not say that, therefore, we were not going to have any more nuclear power stations. We cannot do that; there must be a balance. The point I am trying to make, however, is that the balance has gone too far.

[Andrew George]

The hon. Gentleman uses the word “balance”. In a sense, he is advancing the argument that we need a balanced energy supply, and his part of the world is demonstrating that it has a balanced energy supply. However, is he saying that wind energy should never be used in the UK or that it should be used on occasion to contribute to the balance of energy supply sources?

[Tony Cunningham]

I am saying that. However, what people in west Cumbria are saying very clearly is that they have already achieved that. We already have offshore wind, plans for nuclear, plans for a barrage and lots of onshore wind. We have done our bit. The balance is therefore shifting too far against the environment and the development of tourism and in favour of onshore wind in small clusters, which—I say this with the greatest sincerity—do not make a huge difference.

To conclude, the people of west Cumbria have plans for other forms of energy. They are simply saying that enough is enough.