The prime minister Rishi Sunak has eased planning rules to make building onshore wind farms easier, lifting what had effectively been a ban on new sites.
The amends – which have been designed to help local communities have a greater say – involve speeding up the planning process and increasing the ways in which new sites can be identified. They will ultimately result in electricity bill savings and increased national energy security.
The move comes after a group of MPs – led by Sir Alok Sharma and backed by other Conservative MPs – pushed for an amendment to the Energy Bill to scrap a ban on new onshore farms. Labour also supported the amendment.
Levelling Up, Housing and Communities secretary Michael Gove said: “To increase our energy security and develop a cleaner, greener economy, we are introducing new measures to allow local communities to back onshore wind power projects.”
“This will only apply in areas where developments have community support, but these changes will help build on Britain’s enormous success as a global leader in offshore wind, helping us on our journey to net zero”.
The new energy secretary Claire Coutinho praised the changes, adding: “The Energy Bill is the most significant piece of energy legislation in a generation and will help us provide a cleaner, cheaper and more secure energy system for the UK.”
She continued: “The UK is already home to the largest offshore wind farms, and we have invested and made available over £1 billion for Sizewell C – the first direct state backing of a nuclear project in over 30 years.”
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The Conservatives have bottled it AGAIN on onshore wind.
It still remains easier to build an incinerator or a landfill site than onshore wind.
The planning system remains stacked against onshore wind. This will mean higher bills and energy insecurity for Britain.
— Ed Miliband (@Ed_Miliband) September 5, 2023
However, campaigners have argued that the policy does not go far enough.
“These feeble tweaks are just more hot air from the government that’ll result in very little wind. Developers will continue to face uncertainty over planning process and be beholden to quixotic decisions by local councils,” said Greenpeace UK policy director Doug Parr.
“Who will put their money into developing projects under those circumstances? Resistance to onshore wind is so ingrained into parts of the Conservative Party’s psyche that – no matter how much we need cheap, clean energy to lower bills and slash emissions, and no matter how popular renewables continue to be – they just can’t bring themselves to lift England’s onshore ban,” he continued.
“If Sunak really cared about the climate, delivering energy security or lowering bills, he’d stop obsessing over oil and gas and just remove the planning constraints to get wind turbines built here. It’s really not that hard.”
Shadow climate and net zero secretary Ed Miliband took to X – formerly known as Twitter – to say “the Conservatives have bottled it again”.
“It still remains easier to build an incinerator or landfill site than onshore wind. The planning system remains stacked against onshore wind. This will mean higher bills and energy insecurity for Britain.”
