Asked by: Heidi Allen (Liberal Democrat - South Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, whether he is taking steps to ensure that the level of regulation applied to fracking sites on the permanent monitoring of noise emissions applies also to (a) the wind industry, (b) wind turbines and (c) all wind farm sites; and if he will make a statement.
Answered by Claire Perry
Planning authorities are responsible for applying and enforcing any conditions attached to the planning permission for a fracking or wind turbine development, and this must be assessed on a case-by-case basis. This may include monitoring of noise levels.
Asked by: Heidi Allen (Liberal Democrat - South Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what steps his Department is taking to reduce (a) energy consumption and (b) energy production from biomass fuel after the UK leaves the EU; and what steps his Department is taking to encourage other forms of renewable energy through subsidies.
Answered by Claire Perry
For business energy consumption we outlined in the Government’s Clean Growth Strategy, published in 2017, our goal to enable businesses and industry to improve energy efficiency by at least 20 per cent by 2030. This will contribute to overall economic growth by reducing the amount of energy required per unit of output.
Sustainable, low carbon bioenergy has helped the UK move to a low-carbon energy mix, increase our energy security and keep costs down for consumers. We see the use of biomass as a transitional technology and have announced that support for all coal to biomass conversions will end in 2027.
The Contracts for Difference scheme is our main mechanism for supporting new renewable energy generation projects. The Clean Growth Strategy announced up to £557m of annual support for future Contracts for Difference auctions, providing developers with the confidence they need to invest in bringing forward new projects.
Asked by: Heidi Allen (Liberal Democrat - South Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, with reference to the Oral contribution of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy of 12 September 2017, Official Report, column 635, if he will provide an update on the Government's monitoring of the effect on human health of wind turbine low-frequency sound and infrasound; and what assessment his Department has made of those findings.
Answered by Lord Harrington of Watford
Government commissioned WSP/Parsons Brinckerhoff to review the available evidence on the human response to Amplitude Modulation (AM) noise produced by wind turbines. The final report of the review was published on 25 October 2016 [1].
We encourage Local Authorities and developers to apply the recommendations of the report as appropriate when considering planning applications for new sites to protect local residents from excessive AM noise.
To date, no evidence has been brought to the Department’s attention that changes the recommendations of the report.
Asked by: Heidi Allen (Liberal Democrat - South Cambridgeshire)
Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what plans his Department has to remove the process of constraint payments whereby wind turbine operators are recompensed at times of surplus generation and attempted stabilisation of the grid.
Answered by Lord Harrington of Watford
The Government has no plans to remove the longstanding arrangements for managing transmission constraints, under which various types of generation are compensated in order to change their planned output.