Onshore Wind Farms

Question

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to facilitate the repowering of onshore wind farms.

The Government recognise the importance of repowering to maximise the benefits from our existing fleet of turbines. We are working to remove barriers in the planning system to accelerate repowering and undertaking updates to planning policy in England. In addition, the Government have announced changes to enable repowered onshore wind projects that meet eligibility criteria to bid into the contracts for difference scheme from allocation round 7 onwards.

My Lords, I welcome the Minister’s positive reply. There are some 200 wind farm sites coming up for operational termination by 2030—some 3 megawatts of power. If we managed to repower those, we could have an additional 2 gigawatts without having new sites. That clearly makes sense. Will the Government strengthen the planning guidance for repowering, as the Minister has indicated, because that gets in the way, and will he integrate repowering into the strategic energy spatial plan? It is obvious—come on, let’s do it.

The Government are already undertaking changes to planning arrangements to make sure that schemes can proceed faster and more immediately. In the case of repowering, that is obviously the difference between having to treat a scheme as a brand new development and one that can proceed very quickly, with the necessary consents in place.

Will the Government consider very carefully the cumulative impact of the repowering of overhead powerlines in conjunction with onshore wind farms? Does the Minister not see that it is creeping urbanisation of the countryside, which should be avoided at all costs? At the very least, we should use the electricity generated in that way locally, so that it is not transmitted the length of the country through overhead power lines.

I had thought that I was talking this afternoon about the repowering of wind turbines—that is, turbines that have completed their life in terms of their original blades and mountings, and which are out of the renewable obligation certificate period. The question for those sites is whether they repower, go merchant or close down. That is what the Question was about, but obviously, the issue of cable repowering is more about ensuring that the cables we have across the country can carry the new loads that we hope will be within their capability for the future. That is really a question of making sure that it is done in the most environmentally friendly way possible, but at the same time moving at considerable speed by changing the planning regulations as fast as possible.

The planning presumption during the Tories’ 14 years in power was that if a single objector objected to an onshore power plant, it was rejected automatically. Can the noble Lord say whether the planning presumption will change in favour of onshore power plants rather than against them?

Well indeed. The first thing, literally, that the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero did upon the Labour Government taking office was to remove the ban on onshore wind and make sure that it could in future play a full part in the development of UK wind, as we have begun to see in the allocation rounds. It is a crying shame that onshore was effectively banned for such a long time and is only now recovering.

My Lords, is the Minister aware of the deep anger and enduring resentment felt about the way in which the heritage coast of Suffolk, an area of outstanding natural beauty, is being laid waste by the enormous mess of both rebuilding Sizewell and bringing onshore a series of ill-reconciled offshore programmes? This annoyance is added to by the dismissal of many of the points being made in consultation as nimbyism. Are we going to have a similar performance with onshore power?

I am sure we will not, because onshore power, like offshore power and all other forms of renewable power, has to abide by planning guidelines and guidance and has to fit in well with all the environmental considerations that are being put forward. There will be no change in that requirement; it is just that with the speeding up of some of those processes, onshore wind, where it is requested and where it fits all those requirements, can proceed very quickly.

My Lords, why are the Government so steadfast in their refusal to have a proper, open debate about the relative benefits, environmental and otherwise, of burying power lines as opposed to having overhead power lines? This is not an argument that is going to go away. It is about time the Government fessed up on this and stopped relying on hugely inflated figures provided by the national grid.

I am slightly puzzled by the noble Lord’s enunciation of that question, in that renewable wind and overhead power lines go closely together, because the overhead power lines have to deliver the power that is being generated by the renewable power sources. As for the requirement that that variable output be matched by various other sources of energy when, for example, the wind is not blowing and the sun is not shining, that is well taken care of by the back-up that is already in the system—due, I might add, to a number of renewable sources also being non-variable.

My Lords, I declare my interest as a director of Peers for the Planet. Given what the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, said, in asking this Question, about the increased productivity of onshore wind when it is a replacement for existing infrastructure, is it not time that the Government did as he said and got on with it? I remind the Minister that the urgency of coming to conclusions on repowering existing onshore wind was included in the Private Member’s Bill that I introduced in your Lordships’ House some five years ago.

I pay tribute to the noble Baroness for all her work in this field and for introducing that Bill. As far as getting on with it is concerned, there is nobody who wants to get on with it more than I do. The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, has drawn attention to the fact that we have probably 10.7 gigawatts or more of onshore wind capacity that could retire between 2027 and 2042, and those onshore farms will be completely lost if they retire without any repowering. So repowering is clearly essential, not only to keep those wind farms going on the same sites but because of the tremendous power gain that could come about by using modern turbine methods and modern blades to increase the output by perhaps up to two-thirds when those existing sites are repowered.

My Lords, when considering repowering our intermittent wind energy when, to use the Minister’s words, the sun does not shine or the wind does not blow, does the Minister agree that the main energy policy lesson from the current crisis is that, as a nation, we should prioritise our own firm power energy independence? Does he agree that the best way to achieve this is to reduce our LNG imports from the Gulf and the US by accelerating gas development in the North Sea, and for his department to provide the one piece of paper we are all waiting on—the approval of the Jackdaw gas field to heat 1.6 million British homes this autumn?

We have been around this path several times before recently. Suddenly introducing lots more gas into the system will make no difference to the resilience of this country against international prices, whereas developing genuinely homegrown power over a period makes all the difference. I should add that homegrown power is not just variable homegrown renewable power; it can be batteries, biomass and so on, which can be firm power in its own right. It is a question of getting the whole picture together to make sure that variable power and firm power on a renewable basis complement each other, so that you have reliable power that is homegrown and secure in the long term.