The Conservatives have announced proposals that will make it more difficult for UK wind farms to be built on land if they win an election next year.
The Shadow Local Government Minister, Bob Neil visited East Riding Council last week to discuss the topic of wind farms in the district. Although the area is ideal for wind farms the Council is complaining that it is being put under too much pressure from wind farm proposals. The Council is struggling to justify its refusals when in front of a planning inspector at appeal, given the urgency to create a sustainable energy future.
Despite the region of Yorkshire and Humber not having reached its target for renewable energy the district of East Riding says it has done its fair share through accommodating several wind farms.
East Riding has few constraints to wind energy, particularly when compared with other districts across the UK and many believe the benefits of the area’s good wind resource and suitable sites should be taken advantage of if we are to improve our energy security and reduce the effects of climate change.
Politics.co.uk reported that Bob Neil met with Cllr Steve Parnaby, leader of the East Riding of Yorkshire Council.
Neil said: “If the next government is led by the Conservatives we will be making some very significant revisions to planning policy.
“We will make it harder for developers to appeal against properly made local decisions and give power and control back to local communities.
“Following my visit I will look at how we might change the rules on community benefits from developments such as wind farms so that, where they do go ahead, there is a clear gain for local people.
“We need to get the balance right so that developments can proceed but with local support not local opposition” said Neil.
Wind energy developers will not welcome the proposals which place further restrictions on the wind farms needed to achieve renewable energy and climate change committments.
windturbine
September 21st, 2009
UK has many onshore wind farms. Too many onshore wind farms will affect the life of near people. Government should develop the offshore wind farms.
liberal
September 26th, 2009
once agian the right wingers (tories) have their head in the sand to what is actually needed to be done,lets just let the nimbys refuse everything….!
Gordon
October 2nd, 2009
Liberal.
Would that us NIMBYS had managed to refuse everything!
Sadly, people like your good self seem to be totally unaware of the scale of the current onshore wind rush and just how ludicrously expensive and inefficient it is.
I suggest you visit the Ayrshire Joint Planning Steering Group’s Windfarm Mapping Application to see just how much of southern Scotland is now, and soon will be, covered in turbine parks:
http://gis.south-ayrshire.gov.uk/mapsWindFarm/
Just to give one example, the recently opened Whitelee scheme south of Glasgow consists of 140 turbines (an extension of another 36 has already been announced), each 110m high.
It has a headline capacity of 322MW. Though in reality it might produce about 30% of that. Its output is less than a quarter of that of a compact CCGT gas plant (and we will still have to build the gas plant in order to backup the erratic and intermittent production from Whitelee and and all the other wind power stations).
The scale of this scheme is gigantic: it covers an area of 55 square kilometres, equal to the central area of the city of Glasgow. The project director tells us that, “it takes 50 minutes to drive across”.
Most of the site is wet peat bog with peat up to 12 metres deep. The huge destruction of peat means that there is some doubt as to whether Whitelee will pay back its carbon burden during its lifetime.
The electricity consumer will be paying c. £42 million per year in subsidies to the operators of this scheme.
We are also seeing large numbers of applications for wind power stations in areas of Eastern England with some of the worst wind figures in the UK.
Martin Gardner
October 19th, 2009
Bloody conservatives messing with our very futures and those of our children in order to gain votes! How dare they make light of a serious and immediate need for increased renewable energy generation by promising to put the power for deciding where they are built directly where it should not be – in the hands of the people!
I am all for the democratic rights of the individual, but when measured against the need of the masses for urgent action, this right needs to be tempered by realism.
N. Lys
October 20th, 2009
Martin Gardner, ‘liberal’ and other Windies are the ones with their heads in the sand.
They should examine the real world experience of very large wind power capacity in Spain, Denmark, Germany and the USA and tell me where there has been a corresponding reduction in greenhouse gases as a result of wind power production.
Germany, with c.24,000MW of installed capacity has never, according to their grid companies, achieved a capacity credit of more than 8% (the more they install the faster it falls). Together with the Emissions Trading System, it appears that they have not saved any CO2 emissions. They are being forced to build new coal/lignite-fired power stations to maintain the integrity of their supplies.
Spain, with a huge wind investment, has also seen a huge parallel investment in gas-fired capacity (with, according to Enegas, 99.8% of gas imported) and has seen industry moving abroad to escape their power costs.
Denmark, with the highest per-capita concentration of wind power generation in the world, though having a notional 19% of total electricity consumption produced from wind, in reality often sees single figure percentages of consumption produced, with the majority of wind power production dumped below cost to other countries. The governing Venstre (Liberal) party and their partners, in spite of their wind turbine industry, are now proposing the abolition of subsidies for onshore wind in favour of financing biogas, hydrogen and solar cell development:
“Since 2005, the wind turbine industry has received an average of 1.3 billion kroner in subsidies each year.
“The government’s ally, the Danish People’s Party, welcomed the proposal, pointing out that the subsidies had cost residents and electric companies billions of kroner.
“Party group chairman Kristian Thulesen Dahl said consumers had paid huge additional charges on their electric bills for almost three decades, based on an ideological desire to promote the development of wind turbines.” (Copenhagen Post, 21 September 2009).
It is never realised by Windies that biomass is much more productive and ‘firmer’ than wind:
“The largest output of sustainable energy in Denmark comes from biomass, that is, from the burning of, or the production of combustible gases from, hay, wood chips, manure from domestic animals, and garbage. Biomass accounts for 80% of the Danish production of sustainable energy.” (Danish Government Portal).
Our Government is just beginning to wake up to this fact, having been in thrall to the wind industry since the early 1990’s.
They should read what Cal-ISO, the Californian grid utility has to say about the wonder of wind power:
“On August 9, while giving a summary of the ISO’s performance during last month’s heat wave and energy crunch, Mansour [Cal-ISO CEO] told California’s Senate Committee on Governmental Organizations that while conservation, demand response, interruptible programs, and voluntary load reductions played a ’significant role in making it through the tough days,’ wind resources were on average only supplying about 5% of their installed nameplate power capacity during peak hours.
“It was a good time to educate the legislatures, Mansour told Platts in an interview on August 17. ‘It is very important for them to know what [wind power] does and what it doesn’t do,’ Mansour said. ‘This was a good time to be honest with them’”.
(Platt’s Power Markets Week, August 29, 2006).
That is the general experience of wind power generation around the world. I’ll quote from a report in Ontario:
* Capacity factor so far is 22.3% (not including results from a wind farm apparently experiencing start-up problems);
* Periods of very low or no production were particularly common during high-demand periods;
* High but highly variable wind production during low demand periods was common;
* The hourly production pattern in most months demonstrated a declining average output during the 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. period – a period when consumer power usage consistently increases.
(Energy Probe. ‘Review of Wind Power Results in Ontario’, November 15, 2006).
And from Australia: “Lack of wind and automatic shutdowns triggered by hot temperatures were to blame for the state’s 180 turbines producing just 10 per cent of their maximum power capacity during the January heatwave, according to experts. The experience proved SA could not rely on wind power to provide electricity when demand was greatest, the Electricity Supply Industry Planning Council (ESIPC) said.” (Sunday Mail, Adelaide. 12 February 2006).
Wind power demands a very substantial backup, as everyone in the power industry knows (see what E.ON and National Grid say) which is why, as capacity grows, it saves very little in the way of emissions. The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research puts it well:
“We observed that wind generation has a relatively small capacity credit. At lower levels of wind penetrations the capacity credit of wind generation is found to be about the same as the average load factor of wind. However, as the level of wind penetration rises, the capacity credit begins to tail off. That is why in order to maintain the same level of system security a significant capacity of conventional plant will still be required.
“However, these conventional plants will be required to run either occasionally and/or at part load when shortages of supply are likely to occur due to a low total wind power output. Considering that conventional plants at full load are the most efficient and generate the lowest amount of CO2 emission (per electricity produced) such occasionally and/or part-loaded plants will be less utilised and/or produce more CO2 per electricity produced.
“Wind capacity credit could be significantly reduced if incidences such as anticyclone ‘cold snaps’ occur. These incidences give high demand but little wind anywhere in the country. Such coincidence of high demand and no wind conditions in the whole country could reduce wind capacity credit by up to three thirds.” (‘Ensuring new and renewable energy can meet electricity demand: security of decarbonised electricity systems’, Tyndall Centre Technical Report 30, July 2005).
Suggest you do some research and stop believing BWEA fairy stories and statements from people like Prescott and Miliband, who donb’t seem to know what they are talking about (Hopefully David Mackay, the new DECC advisor, will give them a reality check).