Hello to all HUGAG supporters,
We have nothing new to report about the wind farm proposal at Windy Bank because, as you know, the project is on hold until Banks have completed more survey work on birds and bats. That work is in hand at present - and meanwhile we welcome, as usual, any reports of bird sightings from those of you who live very near the site or who pass that way regularly. You can email us here - but please remember to include details of the dates and times when you see birds, as well as numbers and an indication of what part of the site was concerned.
The main object of this message, though, is to let you know about CPRE's new campaign to try and protect important stretches of countryside from being spoilt by wind turbines.
If you sympathise with the CPRE campaign and could possibly find time to write to your MP (locally Helen Goodman, of course) as they suggest, we would be very grateful.
With best wishes to you all,
Peter and the team at HUGAG
Click on the link below for more details
Hello to all our HUGAG supporters,
We're sorry we haven't been in touch for a while but we actually haven't had anything new to report. As you know, Banks have been told to do more survey work on birds and bats, and some of this work is already under way. This will involve at least a full season of study and data-gathering, so we don't expect any new developments in terms of the actual planning application for several months.
Some of you may have seen the recent articles in the Teesdale Mercury, notably one by Professor David Campbell exposing wind as an unviable solution to our energy problems, and a response by Phil Dyke of Banks Renewables. A letter from HUGAG was subsequently published in the paper also; for those who may not have seen it, you can read both articles further down on this page.
The letter from Natural England is now available in full and is the principal letter demanding the additional wildlife survey work to read this click the link below.
We wish you all a Happy Easter,
Peter and all at HUGAG
Teesdale Mercury
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
HUGAG's Reply
Dear Sir,
Elizabeth Mann (7th March) writes that in evaluating any planning application the balance between benefits and drawbacks is critical. The wind farm proposal at Windy Bank should therefore be weighed accordingly. Mr Phil Dyke of Banks Renewables has set out what he considers the benefits of the scheme, while we in the Hamsterley & Upper Gaunless Action Group (HUGAG) remain very concerned about the drawbacks.
Mr Dyke claims that, in meeting the UK’s growing energy needs, renewables have a contribution to make – a stance with which HUGAG would by no means disagree. But he then claims that the Windy Bank turbines would generate up to 12.5MW of power, saying this is ‘very significant from a local point of view.’ To be fair, he explains that this is in terms of national power generation rather than local.
In fact, when this proposal was first notified some residents imagined that local – and possibly even cheap – electricity would be provided by the scheme! In reality, the electricity goes into the National Grid and, because it is more expensive due to the subsidies paid to the operators, it causes our bills to rise rather than fall. The Government itself predicts an electricity price rise of 60% in the next few years to meet the cost of investment in renewables.
Mr Dyke also says 12.5MW of power would provide energy for 7,000 homes. That might be true if such power were constantly available – but wind turbines only generate intermittently. We would hardly consider it very acceptable to switch on a light or a cooker or a kettle, only to find that nothing happened, so another power source must be available as back-up, and this further reduces the cost-effectiveness of wind. Also, repeatedly varying the demand on the back-up source reduces its efficiency too, just as exaggerated accelerating and braking makes a car consume more fuel.
Mr Dyke claims that local jobs would be created by the Windy Bank scheme. Actually, although local contractors might be engaged to lay 4km of road across currently untouched farmland (regrettably building a bridge or causeway across the marshy valley of the Linburn) most of the highly technical work to erect turbines would not be open to local labour. Banks themselves predict only one long-term job at Windy Bank. They admit that no long-term jobs have been created at Tow Law.
Mr Dyke’s other promise is that community benefits would derive from the scheme. One of his colleagues, however, admits that these funds are normally distributed via the County Durham Community Foundation, so the village nearest to Windy Bank, which is Woodland, would presumably have to compete against other proposals throughout the county for any share. Moreover the sums typically offered by wind farm operators are but a tiny fraction of what they earn in subsidies.
In addition, Banks has recently been approaching Parish Councils, County Councillors and local organisations in the Woodland area, promising them help towards their own local projects if they agree to be named by Banks as beneficiaries of the Windy Bank scheme. We leave it to others to take a view on whether offering such ‘incentives’ is appropriate.
Now we come to the drawbacks: The damage that would be caused by building a road across wildlife-rich farmland has already been mentioned. Because the land in question is rough pasture full of rushy areas surrounding a network of small streams, it may look unimportant in farming terms, but in fact it is exactly those qualities that make it valuable to a wide range of wading birds and other wildlife.
The recent year of bird survey work conducted on behalf of Banks, and simultaneous surveying done independently by HUGAG, has revealed exceptional riches in terms of bird life at Windy Bank. Over eighty-five bird species have been recorded there, including all five British owls, a remarkable range of other raptors, and large populations of several birds listed by the RSPB as nationally vulnerable. These include Lapwing, Golden Plover and Curlew, not to mention game birds such as Snipe, Grey Partridge and Black Grouse. In addition, night-time survey work has indicated Nightjars and several species of bat flying over the site from the Forest fringes for night-time foraging.
What would be the effect of introducing turbines? Banks’ own document admits that there would be losses due to bird and bat strike, and also displacement impact by forcing some populations of birds off the site – and dismisses these as apparently of little concern. In HUGAG’s view, significant damage could be done and it would be too late to remediate it.
And not only wildlife would be affected, of course. The proposed turbines, taller than any at Tow Law, would dominate Hamsterley Forest, the county’s principal outdoor leisure attraction; they would also compromise the very fine, wild views both to and from the neighbouring North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty.
It is increasingly recognised that many visitors to the countryside seek out unspoilt areas where they can enjoy beautiful landscapes and benefit from the restorative effect of temporary peace and quiet. The North East scores more highly than any other area of England for tranquillity (see recent CPRE surveys) and this quality, which is visual as well as aural, is a marketable asset from which local businesses can benefit. That does mean jobs – but not if we allow our peaceful areas to be spoilt by industrialising them with turbines.
Mr Dyke claims ‘a significant degree of support in the area’ for the Windy Bank project. On the contrary, HUGAG is aware of a significant degree of local concern: nine Parish Councils have recommended refusal of the application; Natural England, the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England (CPRE), Durham Wildlife Trust, Durham Bird Group and Durham Bat Group, not to mention Durham County Council’s own ecology officer and archaeology officer have all raised objections; the County Council’s landscape officer and the North Pennines AONB have still to comment, but we know they are concerned about the impact on as yet unimpeded views both to and from the ‘wildest AONB in England’. Finally, at the last count there were also some 250 letters opposing the scheme, the great majority from local residents – and only one, from a person in Surrey, in support.
For all the above reasons, we at HUGAG believe the Windy Bank proposal involves a great many drawbacks – and negligible benefits.
Yours sincerely,
Feb 22, 2012
First there was Barningham, then Bolam. Now there is Hamsterley and Ponder Gill, near Barnard Castle. Wind farm proposals have dominated the local news in recent years, but one question remains unanwered – are they any good? For the first in two-part series, we speak toProf David Campbell, an expert in the field who also happens to live near the proposed Hamsterley site.
IN light of the lively debate in this newspaper about the proposed construction of a wind farm in the Upper Gaunless Valley, I should like to say something about the national and international climate change policy that lies behind this proposal.
I live in the Gaunless Valley and, though the wind farm will not directly affect us, my wife and I object to the proposal on general environmental grounds. My objection is strengthened by work I have done in my professional capacity.
I am a legal academic specialising in the study of forms of regulation and, since 2006, I have studied climate change policy.
I have concluded that the attempt to reduce global greenhouse gas emissions to limit global warming has not merely failed and must continue to fail, but was bound to fail from the outset.
If this is right, then, of course, the UK’s incurring huge economic and environmental costs in pursuit of emissions reduction, including subsidy of wind power and permitting the environmental harm wind farms cause, is fruitless and irrational.
The general public mistakenly believes that international climate change negotiations have failed to establish ‘legally binding commitments’ about global greenhouse gas emissions.
This is not so. These negotiations have indeed failed to reach a commitment to reduce those emissions. But they have reached a perfectly clear commitment to allow emissions to increase.
Climate change law is based on the 1992 United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. This Convention distinguishes between developed and developing countries and asks them to recognise a “common but differentiated” responsibility to reduce emissions.
The Convention imposed no concrete reductions commitments on either set of countries, though it was anticipated that the developed countries would later enter into such commitments. But, crucially, the Convention provided that “The extent to which developing country Parties will effectively implement … the Convention … will take fully into account that economic and social development and poverty eradication are the first and overriding priorities of the developing country Parties”.
As, given foreseeable technology, sizeable emissions reductions must involve immense economic costs, this provision effectively means that there can be no significant limits placed on the emissions of developing countries. All subsequent climate change agreements, including those reached at the major conferences held in Kyoto, Copenhagen and Cancun, have affirmed this position.
The 1997 Kyoto Protocol imposed some reductions targets on the developed countries. It set none on the developing countries. The Kyoto Protocol mechanism that was to involve the developing countries in emissions reduction, the Clean Development Mechanism, was designed in such a way as to make it incapable of delivering any global emissions reductions whatsoever.
Its operation so far has largely been an enormously costly exercise in scandalous waste and fraud and there is no chance of its being substantially improved. The 2009 conference in Copenhagen ended in acrimony and disappointment because the major developing countries would not agree to make emissions reductions and the 2010 Cancun conference fudged the issue.
As a legal matter, it is quite wrong to criticise the diplomacy of the major developing countries at these conferences. They were merely insisting upon what had been agreed in 1992, which is that they have no concrete responsibility to reduce emissions whatsoever. Their responsibility is so differentiated that it doesn’t actually exist.
If the provision prioritising their economic growth had not been included in the Framework Convention, the major developing countries would never have agreed to the Convention at all. For, over the last 30 years, those countries, most importantly China and India, have begun to lift themselves from the desperate poverty in which most of their people still live. Over a billion people in China and India still exist on less than US$2 per day. These countries have no intention of making emissions reductions which would cause them to sacrifice the tremendous achievements they are making in economic growth and poverty eradication.
But these achievements are disastrous for climate change policy because, with their huge populations (40 per cent of world total), major contributions to global emissions (30 per cent), and rapid rates of economic growth (ten per cent per year), these countries are producing and will produce volumes of emissions that will breach any of the targets set to avoid global warming many times over.
Without major reductions by these countries, it is irrelevant what the developed countries, including the USA, do.
The UK is responsible for two per cent of global emissions and typically has a two per cent growth rate. What it alone does can have no effect whatsoever.
Either in denial or ignorance of this, the UK Government has set extraordinarily ambitious emissions reductions targets under the Climate Change Act 2008, and it is the national government which is most doggedly pursuing climate change policy. It is doing all it can to ensure environmental objections to wind farms and other energy systems of which it approves, including nuclear power, will be unavailing. Subsidy of wind power is but a part of the economic costs the Climate Change Act will impose. Incredibly, the cost of electricity in the UK is forecast to rise by almost 60 per cent by 2020 and, of the 2020 price, almost 40 per cent will be attributable to emissions reduction policies. The effect of this on the price of everything else, and so on UK living standards and international competitiveness, can easily be imagined.
The UK citizen should understand that sustaining these enormous environmental and economic costs will do nothing whatsoever to meet global emissions reductions targets.
There are many reasons to object to wind farm proposals I have not mentioned. But surely the fact that any such proposal cannot yield any of the claimed environmental benefits is enough. The real issue is not whether proposals like the Upper Gaunless wind farm should go ahead. It is how so completely defective a national and international policy could have been followed over the last 20 years, and how our Government can persist with it when doing so is outright irrational.
l The academic paper on which this article is based may be obtained by writing to i.d.camp
bell@leeds.ac.uk.
Hello again to all HUGAG supporters,
The recent announcement in the Teesdale Mercury (below) that Bolsterstone has confirmed withdrawal from the wind farm proposal at Crake Scar is welcome, especially if - as the article suggests - the main reasons for the decision were environmental.
Some people may have thought, however, that this means the threat at Windy Bank has been removed altogether. This is not the case.
Bolsterstone's proposal was immediately adjacent to the one for which Banks has applied. They produced a scoping report in October 2008 but the project never reached the formal application stage.
As for the Banks proposal, our information is that they continue to pursue their application most energetically, currently meeting with the various formal consultees who have objected in an attempt to change their minds.
As soon as we hear what they propose to do next, we shall of course let you know.
With best wishes from all at HUGAG
“ Now is the time to establish an absolute, unbreakable rule for protecting the notably unspoilt countryside to the west of the A68. That would preserve its tourism value, would establish a legacy to be proud of, and would be an asset to hand on to future generations.”
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