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Renewable Energy
Response
to TAN 8
CPRW welcomes the government's commitment
to reduce the environmental impacts of climate
change and harmful emissions through encouraging
the production of renewable energy and appreciates
the reasons for the UK government's target to
increase the output of all forms of renewable
electricity from approximately 2% to 10% by 2010,
with a further general aim of doubling that level
by 2025.
CPRW is, however, concerned that
the Non-Fossil Fuel Obligation and its successor
mechanisms produce a divisive conflict between
the two aims of reducing harmful emissions and
protecting a high quality rural landscape. Land
based wind energy has become the lead renewable
technology during the 1990's while almost half
the 770 turbines constructed in the UK have been
concentrated in Wales, predominantly within areas
recognised for their special landscape qualities,
and generators currently proposed (at up to 100m)
are now more than twice as high as those first
built.
CPRW accepts that local planning
authorities are required to have regard to the
government's UK target while attempting to protect
the character of rural Wales, but is alarmed that
in many areas the planning system has been unable
to prevent large groups of conspicuous skyline
turbines which with the many undetermined proposals
pose a pervasive cumulative threat to heartland
landscapes, particularly in mid and north Wales.
CPRW believes that the intermittent
energy generated by existing and projected schemes
is insignificant in relation to their adverse
visual impact, and that - on balance - the benefits
do not justify the damage to the Welsh landscape.
CPRW therefore regards the escalation of development
proposals, appeals, and pressure to relax planning
controls, as a major threat to the integrity,
diversity, scale. space and potential for enjoyment
of the Welsh landscape and countryside.
CPRW concludes that concentration
of wind power on upland and coastal sites represents
an unjustified imbalance between energy and countryside
policies. This is made even less acceptable by
the government’s policy indications that
emphasis should progressively transfer to off-shore
deployment.
November 2004
Current
CPRW onshore wind policy
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