Greg Barker, the UK Coalition Energy & Climate Change Minister has declared that the rush to develop on-shore wind farms is “over” and has damaged the renewable energy agenda, the Energy and Climate Change Minister said. Yesterday he declared in a Newspaper article that future wind farms in the UK would be offshore.

UK Energy Minister Reverses View on Onshore Wind Farms

In an interview with another newspaper last year, he said he had no aesthetic objection to wind turbines and claimed farms near is own Sussex constituency had almost become a “tourist attraction”.

Well, well, why has he changed his stance on this? Could there be an election coming up and the two parties want to attract voters and are coming out with trite phrases such as “We put certain projects in the wrong place.” ?

In an astonishing volte face Barker also said “Some planners have been too insensitive to the impact on the landscape and it has turned public opinion against the wider renewable agenda. We are very clear about the need to limit the impact on the countryside and landscape. It is quite clear the expansion of the on-shore wind rush is over.”

The number of applications being made to build wind farms more than doubled between 2011 and 2012  (from 365 to 820) and a record number of on-shore wind farms were given the green light this year, with 188 being granted planning permission between January and August – an increase of nearly a half on the same period last year. There is clearly a desire on the part of wind farm developers and councils to build and approve onshore wind farms, so why is the Minister trying to pretend the onshore boom is over except to curry favour with the voters in the Shires?

Mr Barker said that Britain was already set to meet targets for 20 percent of its electricity to come from sustainable sources by 2020:

“There’s enough wind projects in the system now so we don’t need to see any more on-shore expansion. The big area for expansion is off-shore, where there is scope for larger projects. With those projects in the system or under consideration in the planning process at the moment, it means we have enough to get to our 2020 targets.”

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Some wind experts dispute that Britain is home and dry for 2020 targets, while others accuse the minister of being naive about the huge costs involved in building and maintaining offshore wind farms. If developers and local councils want to plan and build more onshore wind farms in the years up to 2020, who are the Government to try to prevent this? Could it be that they want nothing to spoil their go-ahead for the first new nuclear plant, to be built in Somerset, South West of England, costing £16 billion, and being financed by non-UK companies.

It’s likely that energy bills will rise, initially at least, and let’s just hope they don’t start fracking near the site of the plant.  Me? Give me wind over Nuclear power any day- and I dispute the claim that nuclear energy is genuinely renewable.  That term should be reserved for sources such as solar, hydroelectric and wind power.

Oh, and what do the locals at the proposed site for the Reactor think, Mr Barker?-

Hinkley Point Demo Sept 2010000_56

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