In an interview with the Telegraph, Shadow Energy Secretary Ed Miliband revealed his plan to lift the ban on building new onshore wind farms if Labour wins the General Election. Here’s an excerpt:
The Shadow Energy Secretary pledged a Labour Government will overturn planning rules that currently require local community support to approve proposed turbines.
If he wins office he plans to use a ministerial “written statement” to remove an obligation in the national planning policy framework for community concerns to be “appropriately addressed”, a stipulation that has effectively blocked onshore wind projects for a decade.
The onshore wind ban was introduced by then-Prime Minister Lord Cameron in 2015, who was so worried by the backlash from Nimbys over a rash of planned wind farms that he gave local communities across England the right to block them.
“The onshore wind ban was a deeply unfair measure… and we want to lift it,” Mr. Miliband told the Telegraph. “At the moment, it’s easier to build an incinerator than it is to build an onshore wind development.”
Those plans are certain to generate a backlash, as they already have in Wales where the Labour Government has created zones called “pre‑assessed areas for wind energy”.
Mr. Miliband said: “People have different views on the onshore wind ban but we’re going to lift it.
“According to the Resolution Foundation, it [the ban] has cost poorer households six times more as a proportion of their income than middle-class households. And we’re going to get the fairness thing right.”
The zoning system in Wales means vast tracts of countryside have been deemed suitable for wind farms, whatever locals might think.
That has prompted a surge in planning applications for giant wind turbines up to 800ft tall, two to three times larger than any yet built in the principality.
Protest groups have sprung up everywhere from Anglesey in the north to Powys in the south. Similar battles are being fought across the Scottish highlands against both turbines and electricity pylons.
Worth reading in full.
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