Energy: Onshore Wind Farming

Lord Giddens Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Giddens (Lab)]

My Lords, I, too, congratulate my noble friend Lady Quin on having initiated this debate so ably. I want to take an unusual and, one might think, improbable tack in this debate.

Everything today is simultaneously local and global, so I am going to look at the case of Northumberland in relation to countries that have a lot of experience of wind power: Denmark, Portugal, Germany and Japan. There is a remarkable similarity across the world in terms of the dilemmas and struggles that arise. I shall mention three here. The first is “Not in my back yard”, which is more or less universal. Most people in most countries are in favour of wind power but much less so if it is very close to them. The second, which is the opposite to that and has just been referred to by the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, is also found almost everywhere. It does not have an acronym, so I invented one. I call it GMPML, which stands for “Get maximum profit from my land”. It pits landowners against local communities everywhere. Thirdly, there are real and justifiable concerns in many cases about the harm done by wind farms to areas of natural beauty and wildlife. All three are visible in Northumberland.

We can and should learn a lot from other countries that have a longer experience of these problems than we do. Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that there has been so much turmoil in Northumberland, given the haphazard and erratic relation between the wind farm companies, local communities, local councils and national government. In my view, it is right that an increasing number of projects have been blocked. Radical localism, suggested by some, is not the answer. I agree with the recent report produced by the Campaign to Protect Rural England, which calls for:

“A strategic, plan-led approach to developing renewable energy infrastructure, locally and across planning boundaries”.

We should note that there have been very rapid developments in offshore wind power—these are not remote; they are here—such as those involving floating platforms. Investing in developing or appropriating such innovations should be a key part of national energy strategy. Problems of corrosion are being resolved. Moreover, out at sea there can be far higher continuity of operation, compensating in some part for the higher initial start-up costs as compared with onshore wind power. What is important in Northumberland, as it is throughout the country, is to get an appropriate mix of all these elements.

To conclude on a comparative note, however, I suppose that I feel more favourable towards wind power than the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley. There are some days, famously, in which Portugal has supplied more than 90% of its electricity from wind power alone, and that shows what can be achieved. However, I fully support the sentiments that have been echoed by the first two speakers.