We residents here in Wales who are fighting to protect and preserve our precious landscapes from foreign developers and investors who seek to rape and pillage them for profit by constructing not clean nor green monstrous 220-250m tall industrial wind turbines with 60+ miles of pylons, have at least two words to say to Starmer.
Labour leader says ministers will be able to use ‘mechanism’ to stop objections and pledges to ‘back builders, not blockers’
By Nick Gutteridge, Political Correspondent • 19 June 2023 • 8:00pm
Sir Keir Starmer has set an ambitious target to double the amount of electricity that Britain generates from onshore turbines CREDIT: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images
Neighbourhoods would not be able to veto the construction of new wind farms on their doorsteps under Labour’s plans to achieve Net Zero.
Sir Keir Starmer said ministers would be able to use a “mechanism” to override objections as he pledged to “back the builders, not the blockers”.
The Labour leader has set an ambitious target to double the amount of electricity that Britain generates from onshore turbines by the end of this decade. To achieve it, he said he would end the de facto ban on new wind farms and rip up planning rules in order to speed up their approval.
Sir Keir was asked what would happen under his green plans if local communities objected to having a new energy project built nearby.
He told the BBC: “Then we have to have a mechanism where we can move forward, because otherwise you get to a situation where everybody says there ought to be more renewables, onshore wind, but I just don’t want it near me. So we have to have a situation where we can resolve that.”
Asked whether that meant residents would have no veto, he added: “I hope we don’t come to that point, because I think that if we manage this through we can achieve something where there’s real consensus and the community see the benefit.
“But yes, there has to come a point where, if we’re going to move forward, we don’t have simple individual vetoes across the whole of the country.”
Sir Keir made the remarks ahead of a speech in Edinburgh during which he laid out his vision to make the UK a clean energy superpower.
Under his plans, local councils would be required to identify land that could be turned over for the production of green electricity such as wind and solar farms.
People living in communities where new renewables projects are built would be rewarded by being given money off their energy bills.
Richard Graham, the Tory MP for Gloucester, said wind farms should be decided by “local democracy”, not “override by central government inspectors”.
The Labour leader insisted that “the moment for decisive action is now” despite warnings that his policy would cost thousands of well-paid jobs.
David Whitehouse, the boss of Offshore Energies UK, warned that the move would be “damaging for the industry, for consumers and for the UK’s net zero ambitions”.
“Consumers and businesses won’t forgive anyone who shuts down Britain’s oil and gas industry only to replace it with imports of foreign oil and gas,” he said.
Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce, where many oil and gas producers are based, said the policy was “not grounded in the realities of the energy transition”. Ryan Crighton, its policy director, said the move would “drive away they very companies they want to partner with to make the UK a clean energy superpower”.
A Conservative Party spokesman said: “Labour have an energy surrender plan to abolish British oil and gas and an economic plan to saddle the British people with billions of debt and borrowing.
“Labour’s energy policy appeases their eco-zealot paymasters and puts dictators like Putin in charge of setting the price of your energy bills.”
Please note that Wales will be carpeted with not clean nor green intermittent and unreliable industrial wind turbines if Scottish newbie developer, Bute Energy financially backed by Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners (CIP) have their way by constructing 23 (and counting) massive “energy parks.”
The “energy park” they plan to construct atop the ancient sacred hills of the Radnor Forest. literally in our backyard, is proposed to have 36 x 220m tall wind turbines plus battery banks, a substation and possibly some 100-200 hectares (257-494 acres) of solar arrays which were included in their sales pitch to our community last summer.
Photo: Views over the countryside surrounding Moelfre Uchaf
There are many people up in arms about Bute Energy’s sinister plans for both massive industrial onshore wind turbines and miles upon miles of pylons the depth and breadth of Wales which has been under the dodgy thumb of Welsh Labour for the better part of two decades.
Welsh Labour is the branch of the United KingdomLabour Party in Wales and the largest party in modern Welsh politics. We don’t know anyone who would vote for the Labour Party in Wales, especially given their super dodgy track record and questionable finances, let alone their increasingly Marxist policies. It is with good reason that the Welsh Senedd in Cardiff Bay is commonly referred to as Corruption Bay.
With national elections in 2024 we must do everything we possibly can to ensure that Welsh Labour and the Starmer-led Labour Party are not voted into leading positions of power.
Starmer’s vow to enable ministers to use ‘a mechanism’ to override our objections to massive industrial onshore energy parks and pylons should rightly put an end to his dictatorial ambitions.
