Onshore Wind Energy

Philip Davies Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Philip Davies (Shipley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Walker. I apologise to you and to the Minister in advance, because I may not be able to stay for the whole debate. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) not only on securing the debate, but on her fantastic speech. I hope that, if nothing else, this debate will show the Minister the strength of feeling on the issue.

I, too, approach the issue from a local interest, namely the proposed development of a wind farm in the village of Denholme, which is on the edge of my constituency. My constituents and I are wholly opposed to it, and it has made me look further into the benefit of wind farms. I want to talk about the bigger picture rather than focus on my particular area, because I think that wind farms are one of the biggest scandals in public policy. The more one looks into the issue, the more of a scandal it becomes. People might refer to my constituents and me as nimbys and use it as a term of abuse, but I would take it as a compliment—I am proud to be a nimby. By definition, nimbys are people who are concerned about their local area and community. We should not be disparaging about that; we should be proud of being nimbys.

I speak as one of the five MPs who voted against the Climate Change Act 2008 in the previous Parliament. It is a great irony that those environmentalists who are such zealots for things like wind farms are prepared to see such damage done to the local environment by wind farms being put up in the most inappropriate locations. We really need a change of tack.

It is surprising that no one has yet pointed out that one of the Government’s problems is that wind farms are a huge part of their attempts to deliver a renewables obligation that has been handed down to this country by the European Union. This Government therefore feel that they have no option but to go down that route, however desirable or undesirable it may be. I do not think, however, that that is a good enough reason to impose such a ridiculous policy on this country.

Many green activists may have us believe that wind farms are a painless panacea and that they are marvellous and very green, but that is nonsense. My constituents want to know how much this is going to cost them. How much will it add to their bills? To be fair, the Department of Energy and Climate Change has been open and honest about the issue. It has made it clear in parliamentary answers that there will be a rise in gas and electricity bills of 18% and 33% respectively for domestic consumers, and of 24% and 43% respectively for medium-sized businesses. That means that, by 2020, the average annual domestic electricity bill will have risen by £105, and that the average medium-sized non-domestic user will face rises of £246,000. That is an increase in their energy bill just in order to follow this particular policy.

It is a ludicrous situation. We are trying to encourage and help our manufacturing businesses—we have a crisis in this country with people relocating their manufacturing business elsewhere—but the Government are pursuing a policy to add a quarter of a million pounds to their energy bills, and we wonder why companies relocate to countries such as China, where they can churn out whatever they want because they do not really care about this. The Government need to do some joined-up thinking.

We seem to not want to upset the green zealots who send us postcards from Friends of the Earth, but why not be honest about what their policy actually means? It is easy to say, “Yes, I agree with your postcard about green energy,” but why not be honest? What they are actually saying is, “We want to add all this cost to your energy bill and to those of manufacturing businesses, and we want them to relocate abroad.”

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Philip Davies]

I hope that the shadow Minister will be honest about what he believes.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

That is why I am intervening. I am sure that the Minister will reiterate what I have to say. Would the hon. Gentleman care to comment in his passionate oration on the current comparative prices between ourselves and France and Germany, which are two of our nearest neighbours, and how we compare internationally as a place to do business in terms of electricity and energy generation prices?

[Philip Davies]

I am pleased that the shadow Minister has mentioned that, because I will mention some illuminating international comparators in a moment. As my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) has made clear, there is no evidence that our constituents are prepared to pay more for their electricity in order to pursue these polices. In fact, only 15% of people polled said that they were either “fairly” or “very willing” to pay higher electricity prices if the extra money funded renewable power sources such as wind.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful point. The costs, as I mentioned in my speech, are a paramount issue. To correct him on one point, the Chinese are not in the position that he says they are. In fact, they announced recently that they will pass a comprehensive law next year. It is not yet as tight as ours, but the truth is that they recognise, as do others around the world, that we need to find ways to drive down the cost and emissions. We are not Don Quixote, alone in our tilting at windmills.

[Philip Davies]

Perhaps we will be gracious enough to introduce those kinds of limits when we have about 80% of the world’s manufacturing in our country. Given that we are not in that position, I would like to think that my hon. Friend would like to help the manufacturing industry in this country.

The bottom line is that these policies will produce for Britain the most expensive electricity in the world if we carry on down this particular route. Is it morally or politically acceptable, particularly at a time of national austerity when families are struggling to pay their bills, for the Government to keep raising them just to meet an EU target? I do not think it is. It will hit the poorest people in our communities first.

I do not understand why the people who propose these green policies are so shy about it. Anyone can say that they are in favour of green energy. It is like asking someone, “Would you like a Rolls-Royce car?” Most people would say, “Yes,” but if one were to ask, “Would you like a Rolls-Royce car? You’ll have to spend the rest of your life living in a tent to pay for it?” they might say, “No.” If we ask people whether they are in favour of green energy, they say, “Of course we are—it sounds marvellous.” However, if the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) were to ask them whether they were prepared to pay astronomical bills in order to pursue that, I think that he might get a different answer.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Philip Davies]

I have given way enough, and others want to speak. The point is that I find it nauseating to hear politicians for ever bleating on about how terrible fuel poverty is when those very same politicians advocate policies that entrench fuel poverty in this country and make it worse. They should be honest about what they are doing. They cannot in one breath say, “I want to see more wind power in this country; it will add this amount of money to people’s bills,” and in the next breath say, “Isn’t it terrible how bad fuel poverty is?” I find that nauseating.

At the moment, Britain is only obtaining a fraction of its electricity from renewable sources. That will have to be expanded massively to hit these targets. The wholesale price of that quantity of electricity is about £1 billion. However, on the renewable obligation, the complex subsidy paid to generators but drawn indirectly from bills adds a further £1.4 billion to those bills. That more than doubles the cost to the British consumer. If 30% of UK electricity is to be renewable in 2020, an ongoing annual subsidy of £6 billion a year or more is required. That is before all the hidden costs of major grid expansion and so on.

[Graham Stringer]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Philip Davies]

I need to press on because other hon. Members want to speak.

What is worse is that the National Audit Office has identified wind power as being one of the most expensive ways of reducing carbon emissions, with recent reports claiming that abating 1 tonne of carbon costs between £280 and £510, compared with £10 to £20 per tonne in the European emission trading scheme. There seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel. When I asked the Minister a parliamentary question about these issues, he replied that the Government have spent £2.2 billion supporting wind energy between April 2002 and March 2010 and that, despite that huge outlay, they have found it impossible to predict when the energy source will prove profitable without grants. The Minister stated:

“We expect that over time we will be able to reduce support for wind power and other renewable energy technologies as they become more economic, but it is not possible to put a specific timescale on this.”—[Official Report, 8 February 2011; Vol. 523, c. 185W.]

I was also struck by the comment about wind speeds and the extent to which they are brought to bear on planning decisions on wind farms. I asked the Government about that last year in a parliamentary question that states:

“what guidance his Department issues to planning authorities on taking into account prevailing wind speeds in determining planning applications for wind farms.”

I would have thought that that would be pretty obvious to most people. I was appalled—although perhaps I should not have been surprised—to be told in the answer that the advice is that

“local planning authorities should not make assumptions about the technical and commercial feasibility of…projects and should not reject planning applications simply because the level of output is small.”

The answer goes on to state that local authorities

“should not question the energy justification for why a proposal…must be sited in a particular location”.—[Official Report, 3 November 2010; Vol. 517, c. 818W.]

Basically, wind speeds are not to be taken into account whatsoever when determining planning applications for wind farms. You could not make it up, Mr Walker.

Wind farms are very inefficient. In fact, during the chilliest periods, when demand is often greatest for electricity, most of the 3,000 wind turbines were virtually stationary. They were working at less than a 100th of capacity and producing electricity for fewer than 30,000 homes. A report by the John Muir Trust—one of Scotland’s leading conservation bodies—found that wind turbines are 25% less effective than claimed. For a total of nine days during some of the coldest periods, output dipped below 10 MW, which is barely enough to boil 3,000 kettles. The situation is absolutely ludicrous.

I could talk about many other issues. Noise is certainly one problem. I reiterate the comment made by my hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness about having distance guidance on where these things could be sited. Scotland has guidance on such matters, as does Wales. I hope that the Government will introduce such guidance for England, too. There are also concerns about wildlife.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire made a great point about the problems in Denmark, but I do not think she mentioned this point, although she may well have done. As the hon. Member for Blackley and Broughton (Graham Stringer) mentioned, the conventional power plants have to keep running at full capacity in case the wind does not blow sufficiently. As a result, the increasing demand for coal needed to plug the gap in Denmark left by underperforming wind farms meant that Danish carbon emissions rose by 36% in 2006. That was when Denmark was massively expanding wind farms. It seems bizarre to say the least. Reports have shown that Danish gross domestic product is approximately 1.8 billion krone lower than it would have been had it not embarked on such an energy policy.

The hon. Member for Ogmore asked for international comparators. In Spain, in 2007, a law passed by the Prime Minister guaranteed producers a so-called solar tariff of as much as 44 cents per kilowatt-hour for the electricity for 25 years, which is about 10 times what they would be able to get on the wholesale market. That has nearly bankrupted Spain, which has obligations of about €126 billion to meet.

There are alternatives, one of which I want to draw to people’s attention briefly. Calor has developed a liquefied petroleum gas fuel cell boiler that has the potential to deliver 50% reductions in carbon emissions in existing homes. It does not require huge subsidies or place a huge burden on the economy, and it reduces fuel bills, rather than increasing them. The technology is practically and commercially available. The boiler is based on clean technology—cleaner than oil, coal and biomass—and I urge the Government to consider some of the other options, rather than pursuing a blinkered approach that results from the belief that wind farms must be good because they sound green. They are doing huge damage to not just our local communities, but local households, which are faced with increasingly big bills to pay for the policy. Such an approach is also damaging our manufacturing industry, as it simply cannot afford it.