Renewable Energy Projects: Community Benefits
Calum Miller Excerpts(1 month, 1 week ago)
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Calum Miller (Bicester and Woodstock) (LD)
It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Dr Huq. I commend my hon. Friend the Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire (Mr MacDonald) for securing this debate.
My constituency of Bicester and Woodstock has had multiple applications for solar farms, but they are dwarfed by the enormous proposal by the Blenheim estate and its development partners for an 840 MW solar plant, the so-called Botley West proposal. We need to make the transition to more renewables in our energy mix. The Liberal Democrats support that transition—we want to see 90% of our energy coming from renewables by 2030—but that high ambition makes steps to increase community benefit from any new scheme essential.
We must bring people with us on this journey by sharing the benefits. As with other aspects of renewable energy policy, the current framework is incomplete and hands too much control to the landowners and developers, often at the cost of local communities. We urgently need an approach to renewables that has a strong presumption in favour of meaningful community engagement and sustained community benefit.
Botley West has not met that standard. That is one of the many reasons why I and many of my constituents object to the current proposal. Originally, the developers offered the community a benefit fund of £50,000, amounting to £59.50 per megawatt of annual capacity. It is derisory. The £5,000 per megawatt of capacity recommended by the community benefits protocol would instead deliver £4.2 million each year to the local community if the scheme goes ahead as currently proposed.
I urge the Government to put in place a framework for new renewables that will place renewables schemes at the heart of community discussions and place our communities at the heart of debates on renewables schemes.