Control of Offshore Wind Turbines Bill

Mark Tami Excerpts

Friday 16th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Chope]

As so often, my hon. Friend is spot on.

[Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman talks about subsidy. Nuclear power, which I support, needs a subsidy, and we have security of supply, which is very important, as a result. Is he opposed to nuclear power on the same grounds?

[Mr Chope]

This Bill is about offshore wind turbines, and the subsidies going to those are twice as much as any subsidy going into the nuclear industry. Let me tell the hon. Gentleman what was said in an article in The Economist on 4 January 2014:

“Unfortunately, offshore wind power is staggeringly expensive. Dieter Helm, an economist at Oxford University, describes it as ‘among the most expensive ways of marginally reducing carbon emissions known to man’. Under a subsidy system unveiled late in 2013, the government guarantees farms at sea £155…per megawatt hour for their juice. That is three times the current wholesale price of electricity and about 60% more than is promised to onshore turbines. It is also more than the £92.50 which Britain’s new nuclear plant at Hinkley Point will get—though that deal is for 35 years, not 15.”

That is the situation succinctly expressed, showing beyond doubt that the taxpayer subsidies going into offshore wind are obscene. The only people who support offshore wind are those whom I must describe as subsidy junkies.

[Mr Chope]

I agree with my hon. Friend. One of the ironies of the situation is that because of pressure from people such as my hon. Friend and members of the public concerned about onshore wind turbines, the Government reduced the subsidies for onshore wind turbines, but in so doing chose to increase the subsidies for offshore wind turbines. I am sure he will be pleased to know that one of our hon. Friends is to have a Bill on the Order Paper to remove subsidies from onshore wind turbines as well, and that will have my support in due course. [Hon. Members: “Hear, hear!”]

On that buoyant note, let me go on to describe the provisions of this Bill. As is implicit in the fact that support for it is largely centred on Members of Parliament in the area around Christchurch bay and Poole bay, a developer is intent on constructing there a wind farm that would be the largest in the world and would have an enormous environmental impact on the local community. It is a joint venture between Eneco Wind UK Ltd and EDF Energy Renewables. The developer wants to construct and operate what it calls Navitus Bay wind park, which would be bigger than any other wind farm currently in operation and the first to be proposed adjacent to a vibrant leisure economy, adjoining a coast of outstanding natural beauty, and bordering a world heritage site. It would comprise up to 194 industrial-scale 200-metre-tall wind turbines; each one would be 15% taller than the Spinnaker tower. They would dominate Poole bay, occupying 153 sq km—an area similar in size to Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole combined. At their nearest points, they would be 9.1 miles from Swanage, 10.9 miles from the Isle of Wight, and 13.3 miles from Bournemouth. The Government guidelines say that no wind turbine should be constructed offshore within a 12 nautical mile limit, and these proposals do not comply with that.

The wind farm is controversial and contentious. As evidence of that, the plans for the development have received almost 2,700 interested representations—the highest number for any proposed offshore wind farm that the Planning Inspectorate has handled. I have not been able to bring along the filing cabinet containing all the representations that I have received from outraged constituents, but I know that I am speaking not just for my constituents, but for those of my hon. Friends along the south coast, in expressing our concern and outrage at what is being planned.

Bournemouth borough council believes that the wind farm

“will cause serious harm to the intrinsic appeal and beauty of Poole Bay’s natural seascape. The industrialisation of our beautiful coastal setting will have an unprecedented and damaging effect on the local economy.”

Surveys carried out by the developer in 2012 and 2013 show that over 1 million visitors a year will stop coming to the area, taking more than £100 million of income from the local economy. As a result of taxpayer subsidy going into developments in Hull, the economy there may receive a temporary boost, but as a direct consequence, on the admission of the developer, there will be a loss of £100 million a year to the local economy, mainly the tourist economy, in the area that I have the privilege to represent. That loss of real spending in our area would negatively affect local businesses and potentially result in business failures, with an estimated loss of some 2,000 jobs. For that reason, the local councils have joined together to spend a lot of money on campaigning against this wind farm development.

I think it is a useful exercise to reinforce those concerns by introducing this Bill. Clause 1 covers the location and height of wind turbines. Subsection (1) says:

“No wind turbine shall be constructed or erected within fifteen miles of the coast”.

That is a necessary minimum requirement that has particular regard to the Government’s guidelines.

Subsection (2) says:

“No wind turbine shall be constructed or erected within twenty miles of the coast…to a height exceeding 100m as measured by the highest point of the turbine blade above sea level from the date of commencement of this Act.”

That means, in effect, that if there are going to be very tall wind turbines that will be more visible, they need to be situated further offshore than those that are not so tall. The article in The Economist referred to the situation in Edinburgh, where a wind turbine under construction was nudging 200 metres in height—and what a monstrosity it was. We are talking about not just one such turbine, but getting on for 200, off the coast of Dorset. Subsection (3) says:

“No wind turbine shall be constructed or erected off shore if it would form part of a group of wind turbines which totals more than one hundred and no group of wind turbines shall be constructed or erected off shore within fifteen miles of any other such group.”

That is designed to reduce the visual and other impacts of such developments, and to stop them appearing like an industrial landscape out at sea.

We now come to a very sensitive matter. Subsection (4) states:

“No wind turbine shall be constructed or erected offshore within twenty miles of any World Heritage site.”

I would have thought that that was a fundamental point and I am amazed and extremely disappointed that the Government have been so laid back in their response to UNESCO’s concerns about the impact of the Navitus Bay wind park on the world heritage site known as the Jurassic coast. The Department for Culture, Media and Sport is supposed to be the guardian of the Jurassic coast. It is promoted as a great tourist centre and we are trying to attract visitors to admire the coast.

UNESCO says that the project’s potential impacts on the natural property of the Jurassic coast

“are in contradiction to the overarching principle of the World Heritage Convention as stipulated in its Article 4, as the completion of the Project would result in the property being presented and transmitted to future generations in a form that is significantly different from what was there at the time of inscription and until today. Specifically, the property will change from being located in a natural setting that is largely free from human-made structures to one where its setting is dominated by human-made structures.”

That is slightly flowery language, but what UNESCO is saying, in essence, is that putting 200 wind turbines so close the Jurassic coast would turn it from being a natural landscape into an industrial landscape. UNESCO wrote in its letter to the Department for Culture, Media and Sport on 4 May 2014 that it wanted its comments to be taken into account in deciding whether the matter should even go to a public inquiry. Instead of responding to that request, DCMS Ministers simply shuffled off UNESCO’s representations to the public inquiry itself, which was a completely wrong-headed way of dealing with such major concerns.

There are a lot of examples around Europe and the rest of the world of UNESCO withdrawing world heritage status from sites that have been adversely affected by development. Only yesterday, a colleague from elsewhere in Europe drew my attention to the fact that, because of an insistence on building an unsightly bridge, part of the city of Dresden lost its world heritage status. We cannot be complacent. We need to look at the substance of the issue. Surely it does not make sense to build such monstrosities so close to a world heritage site, and that is what clause 1(4) covers. Subsection (5) sets out the way in which the

“distance between a wind turbine and the coast shall be measured”.

Clause 2 covers the operation of wind turbines and states:

“No wind turbine situated in or within five miles of an established area used by migrating birds shall be operated during the season for bird migration.”

This is a very big issue. Unlike perhaps the coast of north Wales, the coast of Dorset, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight is frequented by migrating birds. It is extraordinary that the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds has not been more active in campaigning against the development, because it could have an enormous adverse impact on the migrating bird population.

In the summer months, almost all of the 4,500 nightjars in this country are located in and around New Forest and the Dorset heathland. People cannot develop within 400 metres of the heathland because their dogs or cats might attack the habitat of nightjars, Dartford warblers and so on. We are at great pains to protect the habitat of the nightjar on the Dorset heathlands, but when those nightjars wish to migrate in August they will have to go through a mass of enormous wind turbines extending to 200 metres in height. As their name suggests, nightjars travel at night and the impact of the turbines on their migratory pattern will be immense.

One of the main reasons there has been a significant decline in the number of migrating birds coming into the United Kingdom—this has been witnessed by lots of bird watchers—is the impact of wind turbines, not just off our shore, but off the shores of other countries through which those birds migrate during spring or autumn.

[Mark Tami]

What evidence does the hon. Gentleman have that the birds seem to know that the wind farms are there and therefore do not come? That seems to be what he is saying. Is there any evidence to show that wind farms have that effect?

[Mr Chope]

There is actually a mass of evidence. I have a great volume of material, largely from America, because that is where most of the data come from—

[Mark Tami]

America?

[Mr Chope]

Yes, the United States—the hon. Gentleman may not have heard of it. The material shows clearly the impact of wind farms on migrating birds. Obviously, given that these wind turbines are stuck out in the middle of the ocean, it is very difficult to show that so many birds have been killed by their rotating blades at night. We should, however, give the benefit of the doubt to the migrating birds, and one way of doing that would be to ensure that the wind turbines do not operate during the migrating season. That should not be a great burden, because whenever there is a patch of really cold weather, they do not operate anyway, so when we really need that energy and have high pressure, if there is no wind and the turbines do not rotate, they do not generate any electricity or make a contribution to the national grid. Clause 2, therefore, states that we should extend the non-operation of wind turbines to the period when birds migrate, rather than confine it to those times when there is no wind. If we were talking about just one or two wind turbines, it would be possible to argue that the birds can go round them, but we are talking about wind turbines that are close together and that each has a 200-metre wide reach—there is also vortex that they generate—and birds in their vicinity almost certain to fall foul of them and die as a result.

[Mark Tami]

Does the hon. Gentleman not accept that, certainly from the evidence I have seen, bird numbers as a whole are suffering as a result of pesticides and other pollutants? Many of them come from coal-fired power stations, of which, after getting rid of wind turbines, he would no doubt want to see more?

[Mr Chope]

I am a great bird lover, and I do not want any decline in the bird population, but we are talking about particular species that migrate to the south of England after travelling hundreds of miles. We already have restricted numbers of them, and certain species of migrating birds will probably be in effect wiped out at a time when we are saying that we want to look after heathland habitats, which I support.