Government’s new energy plan is full of hot air

In her column this month, Penny Mills, the Director of environmental charity Devon CPRE, explains why an apparent Government U-turn over the development of onshore wind farms won’t help with rising electricity bills and could result in power cuts.

With all the hoo-ha over the economy in the last few weeks, you may have missed an important Government announcement that was buried within a lengthy document about investment and infrastructure plans. Effectively, the new Conservative leadership team has decided to lift the ban on building more onshore wind farms, overturning a moratorium that was put in place back in 2015.

Several years ago, Devon was under siege from developers cashing in on the big profits to be made from subsidised wind power, particularly in north, west and mid Devon. Our small local charity led the opposition to wind farms then, and it looks like we may have another fight on our hands very soon if the Tories press ahead with this ill-conceived plan (which, incidentally, was not in their election manifesto!).

In the current energy crisis, consumers are desperate for ways to bring down their electricity bills and the Government is bound to tell them that more wind (and solar power) will help bring down costs. However, I want to tell you otherwise!

What people don’t realise - and politicians won’t tell them - is that the market price for electricity is directly linked to the wholesale price of gas, and the efficiency of gas-fired power stations.

One of the main causes of our current energy crisis is that Government policy for many years has been to build two redundant electricity systems - wind power and solar power, both of which produce electricity that is intermittent, unreliable and heavily subsidised. When the wind doesn't blow and the sun doesn't shine, the conventional and reliable system based on gas-fired power stations provides all our electricity and prevents power cuts and blackouts. So, the operation of wind and solar systems actually results in gas-fired power stations operating inefficiently and they have to set a high market price to remain profitable.

In a nutshell, the more wind farms and solar farms that are built, the less efficient our gas-fired power stations become and the market price for electricity goes up.  Frustratingly, it has been impossible to get this simple message through to politicians of both main parties, whose energy policies are to build more wind and solar farms because they are seen as 'green and clean'.

Also, because they are labelled as renewables, no one questions their carbon footprint - the rare natural resources used in their manufacture, their transportation halfway across the globe, and how they are disposed of at the end of their life.

The last thing Devon CPRE wants is a return to the ‘wind farm wars’ and the majority of people in rural constituencies and their MPs agree. No doubt why the Government’s change of policy on onshore wind was so well hidden!

If you would like to help us protect the countryside for future generations, find out more at www.devoncpre.org.uk