Onshore Wind Energy

Andrew Percy Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, although some would argue that the cost would be defrayed over a few months, once the turbines are built. Of course, it all boils down to how much energy the turbines produce.

Upgrades to the grid will cost about £5 billion by 2020. That alone will add 1% to every fuel bill, as it is consumers and businesses who will be paying the cost. In 2005, Paul Golby, the chief executive officer of E.ON, said:

“Without the renewable obligation certificates nobody would be building wind farms.”

In 2007, Ofgem said,

“we think there are cheaper and simpler ways of meeting these aims”—

the aims of reducing carbon emissions and promoting renewables—

“than the renewables obligation scheme which is forecast to cost business and domestic customers over £30 billion.”

In 2008, the Centre for Policy Studies predicted that meeting the 2020 renewables target would require a taxpayer subsidy of between £4 billion and £5 billion a year. That would add £3,000 to the total fuel bills of every household—that excludes the cost of infrastructure —and it takes no account of the fact that, in 2009, 4 million households were in fuel poverty. The cost of these things must be taken seriously into account.

I am delighted that the Government have announced that they intend to share the financial benefit of onshore wind farms with communities. That is important because there is no doubt that taxpayers will be paying the price; it is fair that the communities that host wind farms should share in the rewards.

Another cost of wind farms that is hard to quantify is the impact on communities. Hundreds of campaigners are fighting against having wind farms in their areas. Their concerns are wide-ranging. They include visual problems: many of the new wind turbines are bigger than Big Ben and taller than the London Eye; they are said to intimidate villages and ruin areas of outstanding natural beauty, and there is mess and disturbance while they are being built.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

We have exactly the same problem on the Isle of Axholme in North Lincolnshire. Several local villages in my area were faced with about 14,000 vehicle movements for up to two years during the construction of a 34-turbine wind farm. The wind farm was refused permission by the local authority, but it was granted on appeal. It is not only what happens afterwards. It includes what happens during the construction phase, which is not a short time.

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend makes a good point.

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[Tony Cunningham]

I strongly concur with the hon. Gentleman on one point. When I speak to groups in my constituency who talk to me about the visual impact, the noise and everything else associated with turbines that are proposed for their area, they remind me on many occasions that there are not a lot of turbines in Green park, Regent’s park or any of the parks in London, or indeed any of the other areas where there are no wind turbines at all. Why is it that people come back time and again to a small area such as west Cumbria?

The point that I want to move on to is a cogent one. The question that those people in my constituency keep asking is, “Isn’t there a balance? Isn’t it tipped too far the other way in favour of wind turbines when it comes to the disadvantages that we’re up against?” We are trying to protect the environment in a beautiful part of the world. We are trying to develop tourism not only in the centre of the Lake district, but across in west Cumbria. The balance in favour of wind turbines is being overtaken by the need to protect our environment and develop our tourist industry—that is the problem.

The Minister might be interested to hear that I wrote to the inspector to ask whether he or she would take into consideration the cumulative effect of having so many wind turbines in one area, shifting the balance against wind turbines. I got a letter back saying, “Yes, we will take into consideration the cumulative effect of so many wind turbines in one area.” We have dozens and dozens of wind turbines in west Cumbria, and the local authorities turned the last two planning applications down. Those applications resulted in huge campaigns by local residents, and I spoke vehemently against both at the public inquiries. None the less, the inspector turned around and said, “Well, on balance, we’ll allow them to go ahead.”

What was slightly scary was when I got a phone call from someone who asked, “What can we do?” These are honest, decent people, who have reached the end of their tether. They are wondering, “What can we do? We’ve been to a public inquiry. We’ve done everything we legitimately can, but they still want to put three turbines in a field. These turbines won’t generate a great deal of electricity, but they’re going to blight the area.” That is worrying.

[Andrew Percy]

I want to reinforce the hon. Gentleman’s point. A planning application was turned down twice in my area and it recently went to appeal. Precisely because there would be a wind farm with 34 turbines opposite the proposed site and another wind farm with 18 turbines a little further up the road, and precisely because there was already a wind farm opposite with eight turbines, the inspector, rather than taking into account the cumulative impact, turned around and said, “Actually, this is a wind turbine vista. As such, people will not be impacted significantly by another eight turbines.”

[Tony Cunningham]

I can only agree with the hon. Gentleman. These things sadden me. I do not want to get into the issues raised by the Localism Bill, but we are, rightly, concerned about generating enough electricity and dealing with climate change, and the community is saying, “We’ll help you. We’ll agree to a barrage. We’ll agree to offshore wind. We’ll agree to nuclear. But in return, can you please prevent any more onshore wind farms from being built?”

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) on securing the debate. She might call me windy—maybe I am occasionally full of hot air —but she has done very well to secure the debate. I impress upon hon. Members the importance of signing up to her excellent amendments to the Localism Bill.

It is a shame that the debate is taking place in here and not the main Chamber. We are not in the main Chamber because an important debate on votes for prisoners is going on, but how many more people would be present if another important debate were not taking place? I emphasise to the Minister that there is a very big political push behind the matter. Many hon. Members were present when I introduced my Adjournment debate in this place on the subject and they sponsored my ten-minute rule Bill on the matter. I would like to think that there is a growing level of support for people who are rightly questioning the value of onshore wind.

The Minister will know that I consider onshore wind to be about as useful as a cat-flap on a submarine when it comes to fulfilling renewable objectives. What it does for the economy can only be described as bad. My constituency is pretty much flooded with proposals for wind farms. I managed to get them rejected in Kelmarsh and Harrington. I mentioned Yelvertoft, which was passed by the Planning Inspectorate. Other proposals include: Watford Lodge, Watford Gap, Lilbourne Fields, Winwick Warren, Boddington and Hanging Houghton, the proposal for which has fortunately gone away. There are loads and loads of these blooming proposals coming out of the woodwork because people are basically subsidy farming. They are taking the cash that the Government are offering, which is way in excess of what it should be.

A number of hon. Members have mentioned campaigns in their own areas. They will all know that, in every campaign, there are people who are genuinely worried about what is going to happen to their property if it is near any proposal, so they turn themselves into fantastic experts on the subject. Such people have helped me with my contribution today. In my constituency, Trevor Sherman, Richard Cox, Adrian Snook, David Unwin and Richard Humphries have all become absolutely brilliant experts in this field. They noticed that the Department has issued a consultation on the revised draft policy statement EN-3 on renewable energy infrastructure. I wanted to pick up a couple of things on that because they are directly related to what we are talking about.

First, a number of hon. Members have alluded to the problem of noise. The Minister and I have been in correspondence because I wanted to recommend an expert to peer-review the ETSU-R-97 noise guidance. I am troubled by the Hayes McKenzie proposals. ETSU-R-97 contains fundamental errors, which means much time and money is wasted by public inquiries and in debating how to remedy those flaws. The Government’s current response is:

“There is no substantive evidence to demonstrate that the fundamental guidelines are unsound and the Government therefore has no plans to revise them.”

Actually, I think that it is very easy to demonstrate that ETSU-R-97 is incorrect. For example, the guidelines are predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of how wind speeds vary with height and weather conditions, and thus the guidelines underestimate noise impacts. The evidence for that is covered in a series of peer-reviewed scientific papers by van den Berg dating from 2003, and the point has been widely accepted in the scientific world and by planning inspectors.

The ETSU-R-97 guidance on noise conditions is deficient at the most fundamental level. For example, the guidance fails to specify that noise compliance measures be taken with the wind blowing towards a complainant’s property; that they should be taken at the appropriate time of day and in similar meteorological conditions to those which triggered the complaint; or that they be taken with the turbines working, or working in a normal mode. The absence of those requirements renders the guidance at best vacuous or at worst harmful to the public interest.

On the issue of peat, there can be no reason why wind farms should be built on, or in close proximity to, peat. To do so releases so much carbon dioxide that any good that might be done by installing wind turbines is reduced.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire talked about shadow flicker. Yet again, the Department’s revised draft national policy statement for renewable energy infrastructure, EN-3, repeats the unsubstantiated claim that shadow flicker only occurs within 10 rotor diameters of a turbine. In correspondence with the Department of Energy and Climate Change last year, the Renewable Energy Foundation requested the source from which this statement was derived and was informed that it was a paper written by A. D. Clarke in 1991 for the Open university, entitled “A Case of Shadow Flicker/Flashing: Assessment and Solution”. However, on examination the REF found that that paper does not prove the 10-rotor-diameter claim. In fact, its recommendation was that

“turbines should be sited at least ten diameters distance from habitations, and more if sited to the East/Southeast or West/Southwest, and the shadow path identified”

On a point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart), I wondered, because there is so much angst on the issue, whether the Minister would kindly explain, in the simplest of terms, the reasons behind and the meaning of today’s article in The Daily Telegraph about localism and incentives. I think I welcome that, but I am not entirely sure. If the Localism Bill becomes law as it stands, will the Minister confirm that it would be down to neighbourhoods, in conjunction with the districts and boroughs in which they reside, to choose to have wind farms of up to 50 MW, whether they are incentivised or not? That would solve a huge number of problems for all of us in the Chamber.

[Andrew Percy]

My hon. Friend is on entirely the right point, but we also need clarification on what exactly the appeal process will be. We have not had that in previous debates with local government Ministers. We are not yet clear what the appeals process will be and we need to know that residents will have the final say and that they are not going to risk getting it peeled off to somewhere down in Bristol again.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I completely agree. I was actually about to come on to that in the next couple of sentences, so I will not talk about that in order to give hon. Members more time to speak.

It would be very helpful if the Minister could outline both what the Localism Bill means for onshore wind farms of less than 50 MW, and any appeal process after that.

Finally, the Minister, the shadow Minister and I enjoyed a couple of hours together, a couple of Wednesday mornings ago in European Committee A, talking about energy. The Minister, in answer to one of my questions, said:

“We have expressed concern that feed-in tariffs were not intended to be used to convert farms, which could produce crops, into large solar farms”,—[Official Report, European Committee A, 2 February 2011; c. 17.]

and that things were being adjusted to stop that happening. If an excessive subsidy in one area of renewables leads to unforeseen consequences and it is of detriment to the local environment, it would be wise and sensible to apply that same logic to onshore wind, where excessive subsidy is causing even more concern across the whole country.

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[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

I will be as quick as I can, Mr Walker, despite the plethora of wind farm applications that is currently affecting my constituency.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

We have an extra five minutes, so the hon. Gentleman does not need to rush too much.

[Andrew Percy]

Thank you, Mr Walker. That gives me time to mention all my various campaign groups. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) on securing the debate. Since her election, she has proven a vociferous campaigner on this and many other issues, and it is good to see her standing up for her constituents again today.

On a positive note, I am a big supporter of the renewables industry, which has the potential to offer thousands of jobs up and down the country. As the Minister knows, in the Humber, fantastic opportunities are coming our way with the announcement that Siemens is coming to the region for offshore wind. Companies are coming for manufacturing, and all sorts of opportunities are facing us. All MPs, local authorities and businesses are trying to support the Humber, and I thank the Minister for the support that he has shown. The region has suffered considerably over the past 10 years, never mind the current austerity measures, but renewable energy is one way that our region can come back. I am a big supporter of renewable energy, especially offshore wind. When it comes to onshore wind, however, with no whiff of hypocrisy I have a few concerns about where the country is heading.

My constituency crosses east Yorkshire and north Lincolnshire and contains some of the flattest parts of the country. A lot of it is drained marshland; it is very flat, we have wide horizons, and consequently we also have high wind speeds. That means that we have been besieged by wind turbine applications. Such applications are not for small wind farms. When I heard one hon. Member speak of three or four wind turbines I thought, “If only.”

A wind farm application for 34 turbines at Keadby has been given permission on approval. There is permission for a wind farm at Goole Fields for 20 turbines, and at Twin Rivers for 15 or 18 turbines—there are so many, I forget the exact numbers. Wind farms already exist at Bagmoor, and there is another farm of 18 turbines at Saxby Wold. There is an application for a number of turbines at Worlaby, and I have 14 turbines opposite my house in the village of Airmyn, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Selby and Ainsty (Nigel Adams). We successfully fought off an application at Elsham and, most recently, just this week North Lincolnshire council refused planning permission for the third time for Flixborough Grange. That was for a small development of eight turbines. It has been through the planning application twice, and been to the planning inspector once. On that occasion, the inspector upheld the local authority’s decision, but within less than a year the application came back in exactly the same format as the first one. The planning committee at North Lincolnshire council said no again on Wednesday, and I thank Conservative colleagues on the council, along with a small number of Labour councillors, for standing up for local residents.

Such things demonstrate how ridiculous the situation has become. North Lincolnshire hit its 2020 targets two or three years ago, but it continues to be besieged by application after application, and something has to give. We were willing to play our part. One or two of the applications I have mentioned—including that at Goole Fields, which is in the east Yorkshire part of my constituency—went ahead, despite being a big development, with very little public opposition. Residents were generally supportive of that location, so it is not a case of saying no to everything. We were prepared to do our fair share. In North Lincolnshire, when the Conservatives ran the council, we adopted a policy of, “We will take our fair share but we want a say in where the wind farms will be located.” Because of that policy, we hit the 2020 target. Nevertheless, it made no difference. Applications continued, they were approved on appeal, and the 2020 targets meant nothing. Thanks to the vociferous campaigning of groups such as BATs—Burton Against Turbines—and SWATs—Saxby Wold Against Turbines—we have managed to stave off some of the applications. However, if it were not for well-organised individuals in particular villages, we would be covered in wind turbines.

There are great opportunities in the Localism Bill for communities to have more say. However, I am concerned that we will end up in a situation where, as one Minister said, we have to “frontload” the system. That is all well and good in parts of the country that have not already played their role, but we feel that we have played our part and hit our target. We have hundreds of wind turbines planned. They are all 410 feet high—we will have none of that metric nonsense. Imagine looking out at 34 turbines, each 410 feet high, and then turning a little and seeing a further 20 turbines three or four miles up the road, and then a further 18 a couple of miles further on. We are creating landscapes of turbines that are encircling communities.

We do not mind playing our part on energy. We have Drax power station, Keadby gas-fired power station and several coal and gas-fired power stations in the area, and we are willing to accept them as important and necessary for the country. We must, however, ensure that as substantial numbers of turbines have been approved, a planning system is in place to support residents who say, “No, we’ve done our bit already.” We cannot ask communities to do their bit year after year, and I would like to hear from the Minister about our position on the big, onshore developments. I too will support the amendment to the Localism Bill tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire.

I do not want to take much more time as one more Member wants to speak. The issue of appeals is perhaps not in the Minister’s remit, but I am sure that he talks regularly to his colleagues in the Department for Communities and Local Government, and we must establish what the appeals procedure will be. We understand that there will have to be an appeals procedure for bigger developments, as they are national infrastructure issues. The system must take local people into account and not allow what happened to East Riding of Yorkshire council a few years ago. It had a good record of risking public money in defending appeals and had turned down a number of wind turbines. However, through the Secretary of State, the inspector not only overturned a decision, but said to the democratically elected councillors, “You must stop rejecting these wind turbines.”

Where is the democracy in that? That is the planning system we have been left with by the previous Government. That is why it is so important that localism means exactly what I think it means—local people having real power and a real say over what goes on in their communities.

I again pay tribute to the Minister for his work in supporting our renewable efforts in the Humber. I hope that he will respond to my debate in this Chamber next week on the renewable opportunities in the Humber. We support renewable energy, but when it comes to onshore wind, we in Brigg and Goole say that we have done our bit. We were happy to do our bit, but enough is enough.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Order. The winding-up speeches will start at 4.55 pm. I call Stephen Barclay.