Member Article

Reveal wind-farm locations to protect countryside say CPRE

The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) is calling on the Government to provide more information on the number and location of onshore wind turbines to be built in the UK.

A report by the CPRE has highlighted the dramatic proliferation of onshore wind turbines, and they are now calling for a locally accountable strategic approach to further development.

While the CPRE accepts that onshore wind is needed to help meet UK carbon reduction targets, they feel that increasing numbers are located in inappropriate locations.

Shaun Spiers, CPRE chief executive said: “Communities feel increasingly powerless in the face of speculative applications from big, well-funded developers, and this risks undermining public support for the measures needed to tackle climate change.

“The English countryside is one of this country’s great glories. It will always change, of course, and it is right that the countryside should play its part in supplying the renewable energy the country needs.

“But we must find a way of reconciling climate change mitigation and landscape protection, otherwise we will sacrifice the beauty and tranquillity of much-loved landscapes for at least a generation.”

Last year the former Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Chris Huhne promised that the Government would not “wantonly plant wind farms across the countryside at random”. However, it appears that some wind energy developers have entered the planning process with a dismissive attitude towards public concerns.

Now in the report ‘Generating light on landscape impacts: How to accommodate onshore wind while protecting the countryside’, the CPRE have made a number of proposals for action.

They believe the Government should develop a strategic plan-led approach recognising landscape capacity, whilst ensuring that local planning authorities seeks to protect the character of the landscape through local plans and planning decisions.

The onshore wind industry must also take legal and financial responsibility for decommissioning onshore wind turbines and restoring the landscape once they stop working or reach the end of their useful life.

Shaun Spiers concludes: “In spite of localist rhetoric, the industrialisation of valued countryside is happening as a result of central government policies.

“The Government must take responsibility and set out far more clearly a framework for meeting the country’s energy needs while protecting our matchless countryside.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .