What’s happening to the wind farms?
The British Wind Energy Association (BWEA) raised concern at their annual conference in Liverpool that local authority approvals of wind farm applications have fallen to a new low of just 25 per cent. Their latest ‘State of the Industry Report’ indicated that despite the strong growth in the number of wind farms being built, there has been a significant drop in the number of new applications being approved locally. The BWEA analysis showed that approvals of new wind farm applications by local authorities has fallen from 63 per cent in 2007 to 25 per cent so far this year, forcing more developers to go to appeal. This is astonishing when compared to an approval rate of more than 70 per cent for roads, housing and supermarkets.
Approval rates at appeal, however, are running at more than twice the rate by local councils. Some 62 per cent of schemes which go to appeal are successful, BWEA’s figures indicated.
Despite the concern there has been a rapid increase in renewables at a national level. Renewable electricity consumption has nearly tripled since 2002, with 5.5 per cent renewable electricity in 2008 and onshore wind growing 29 per cent between 2007 and 2008. The Government is trying to increase the amount of energy generated from renewable sources in order to meet its challenging targets for carbon reduction in order to tackle climate change. The Planning Act 2008 already introduces the new planning process for major infrastructure which will include large windfarm projects. The Government has also introduced reforms to the local planning process in England by tightening up the appeals process, awarding costs for unnecessary delays, and calling in decisions to central Government where needed.
At the conference, former Deputy Prime Minister and veteran Labour cabinet minister John Prescott argued that councils should be forced to earmark sites for new wind farms as part of a strategy to override local residents’ objections. His comments came as communities secretary John Denham allowed on appeal a proposal for a cluster of three small wind farms in the Lancashire Pennies. The proposals, from Coronation Power, were handled by three separate planning authorities (Rochdale and Calderdale Metropolitan Councils and Rossendale Borough Council) and involved a total of up to 15 turbines.
Meanwhile, energy secretary Ed Miliband has announced a £5.15m research programme into the problem of radar interference from wind turbines. Aviation radar objections are one of the largest causes of wind planning applications being rejected or withdrawn in the UK. There are currently objections by NATS (formerly National Air Traffic Services) to more than five gigawatts of wind farm proposals that are in the planning system.
