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Draft National Policy Statement for Fossil Fuel Electricity Generating Infrastructure (EN-2)

My Lords, last weekend, I attended a conference of wind farm protesters in the north of England. It brought together people from all over the country at their own expense, most of them necessarily of retirement age, with no axe to grind other than a desperate wish to stop the steady march of wind turbines across England and to protect their homes, the landscapes that they love and, in many cases, look after for others to enjoy. It is a vastly unequal struggle. On the one hand are the developers, some the major energy companies of the world, some fly-by-night opportunists, all of them enabled by the subsidy handed to them by the consumer, courtesy of the Government, to sell all the electricity that they can produce at more than twice the market rate, and therefore offer huge, irresistible sums to selected landowners, sweeteners to local interests. They are rich enough to appeal against every decision that goes against them, employing QCs and solicitors by the dozen. On the other hand are the affected local residents, and all others who value the treasured landscapes of this country, who struggle to raise the funds to find the most junior legal or even lay representation, and who can hardly afford to appeal against any decision that goes against them. It is truly a battle of David against Goliath, but still the inspectors, magnificently independent, manage to find against the developers in a high proportion of public inquiry cases. I know of seven appeals by wind farm developers against local authority planning decisions which have been rejected by the inspectors within the past six weeks alone. In these cases, damage to the landscape, particularly within the setting of an AONB or national park when that is the case, figures prominently, but not exclusively, among the reasons for rejection. Increasingly, seemingly, the adverse effects of the development on local residents seem to sway the minds of the inspectors, and the number of residents affected can be extremely small—five, in one case in the north of England, and in the most recent case the effect on one farming family alone, whose life was judged by the inspector to be likely to be made intolerable if the development went ahead, was considered enough for him to dismiss the developer’s appeal. The nearest turbine in that case was 650 metres away. It might be asked at this point: what has that got to do with the IPC? But why should the IPC not be likely to show as much humanity as planning inspectors when asked to make the same sort of judgments? The Government gambled that by applying inordinate pressure on local authorities and the planning inspectors to force on them the responsibility for achieving the Government’s renewable energy targets, they would browbeat and overwhelm local opposition. In fact, they are not succeeding. Local opposition is becoming more informed and more organised. The developers’ proposals, meanwhile, encouraged by the Government’s own overbearing approach, have become ever more outrageous. The number and height of the turbines grow prodigiously all the time; in my area there is currently an application for no fewer than 20 turbines, each up to 110 metres high and situated six miles within an area of outstanding natural beauty. That comes up for decision next week in front of the local planning authority. The inspectors seem to have become more sensitive to the damage that these monstrous industrial structures can do to the landscape and to individual lives. Unlike my noble friend Lord Crickhowell, I am afraid that I see no evidence that the Government are abandoning or even downgrading their pursuit of onshore wind turbines. No one would be more delighted than me if the Minister was able to indicate that I was wrong and my noble friend was right. He seemed to nod for a moment when my noble friend was speaking, and if he is able to give that assurance—