From 2015 to last year, there was a defacto ban on onshore wind. This was because of a change by David Cameroon, who changed planning rules, so it took just one objection to block a wind project. This was a stupid idea, and indeed was only put in place as a result of NIMBY (not in my back yard) concerns from wealthy donors and conservative MPs.
Why should we care, if these wealthy people blocked onshore wind for all that time? Well it is estimated that the lack of extra onshore wind capacity is costing around £510 million to the UK public, because it is easily the cheapest electricity. To put that in perspective that is £182 per household (this is from july 2022-june 2023).
We need to reverse this foolish decision now. We need every wind turbine we can get, in the effort to reach carbon neutral power generation in the UK as soon as possible.
If that is the case, which since the ban has been listed, has no one tried to build any more?
Well the government did not go far enough. Rather than putting it back as it was, it merely lifted the ban. Prior to the ban, it was part of the governments nationally significant infrastructure projects process, which greatly encouraged its use. Funnily enough, the UK government has rejected the proposal to put it back as it was, which is likely to mean it takes far longer for this foolish decision to get reversed.
They savings predicted above come from an estimated 7gw of capacity that would have been installed.
Ed Miliband, the shadow energy secretary has stated that Labour would reverse this foolish move.
It is known that in terms of fighting climate change, we can invest now, or invest tens of times more in the future. The current government appears to have made the decision to hit our grandchildren rather than doing the right thing. Whether you are a life-long Conservative voter or not, if you have children, this should force you to look very carefully at the alternative, the next time we are asked who we want to run the country (with an election likely this year).
