Concerns About Onshore Wind Farms

This week my neighbouring MP from Nuneaton, Marcus Jones, and myself joined over 100 colleagues from across the political spectrum to express our concerns about the growth of onshore wind farms. We signed a joint letter to the Prime Minister expressing those concerns and making some practical recommendations on how the National Planning Policy Framework could be amended to give greater weight to the concerns of local people when making planning decisions about onshore wind farms.

I should make it clear that we are not opposed to renewable energy, and not even opposed to the principle of generating power by wind. Britain needs a diverse and secure domestic energy supply, and wind power clearly has a role to play. However, as things stand there are a number of concerns about wind power that need to be addressed. I will briefly discuss issues of cost, intermittency of supply, and local environmental impact.

Wind power is very expensive. According to research conducted by the House of Commons Library, the total cost of generating a megawatt hour of electricity with a small sized onshore wind farm is £104.90. That is higher than using an advanced super-critical coal fired power station (£95.40), a combined cycle gas turbine gas fired power station (£76.60) or a third generation pressurised water reactor nuclear power station (£74.10). These figures are calculated taking into account the full cost of producing energy from each technology type, including initial build costs, lifetime operation, maintenance and fuel costs, and final decommissioning and waste costs.

In order to make wind power work, it requires considerable subsidy. Ultimately, that subsidy is paid for by consumers in the form of higher energy bills. The logic behind subsidising expensive forms of energy production like this is that, as the technology becomes more mature over time, the cost eventually falls until it becomes affordable and viable without subsidies. For that to happen, it needs a kick start. But my colleagues and I are concerned at the added cost to consumers bills from subsidising this technology at current levels.

The second issue with wind power is an obvious one. The wind doesn't always blow. Estimates for the average 'load factors' for wind turbines vary between 20% and 40% - meaning that a wind turbine might only generate some 20% of its potential power output due to the intermittency of the wind. What this means in practice is that when we invest in wind farms, we also need to build alternative methods of power generation ready to be switched on when the wind doesn't blow. The added cost of this is hard to estimate, but is thought to add around 45% to the cost of generating power by onshore wind.

Finally, wind farms are ugly. I know some people claim to like them, and perhaps some do, but most people I speak with believe that 120 metre high wind turbines are a blot on the landscape. This might seem like a nimby-ish attitude, but as a Conservative I don't consider it to be a bad thing when a community cares about their local environment and want to preserve that environment for their children. As things stand, there is an increasing tendency during planning appeals involving onshore wind farms for inspector to cite renewable energy targets as being more important than planning considerations. That concerns me. With the Localism Bill, the Coalition Government is genuinely devolving decision making away from the centre and empowering councils and local communities. I want to see the planning system respect the views of local people, and the need for renewable energy should not trump legitimate concerns about the local environmental impact of onshore wind turbines.