Cutting the onshore wind subsidy is perverse nimbyism

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/18/cutting-windfarm-subsidy-tories

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Today, the government fulfils one of its most perverse manifesto pledges – to end the subsidy for onshore wind turbines a year early, in April 2016. This is cavalier and contrary policy-making, designed to please the nimbys in its shire heartlands, regardless of wider energy policy, regardless of climate change.

As the Tories plunge ahead with far more expensive, disruptive and unpopular fracking, onshore wind energy is the cheapest of all renewables, and Britain one of the most wind-rich spots on earth. What a long journey Cameron has travelled since the days when he fixed a symbolic turbine on his own roof.

Related: David Cameron at centre of 'get rid of all the green crap' storm

This is a very particular political payoff to small groups in key Tory seats, a payback to key climate change-denying windfarm-haters in the Tory press and an appeaser for restless Tory backbenchers after their first EU rebellion. As for the public, polls show two-thirds of people strongly in favour of onshore wind, including in areas where turbines are planned, while only a quarter support fracking.

This is another sign of Cameron’s recklessness towards to the union: Scotland was not consulted before this announcement, and yet has 70% of planned windfarm sites.

What an odd moment to announce this in-your-face attack on environmentalism on the very day the Pope issues his climate change encyclical, calling it a moral challenge to global indifference. “This home of ours is being ruined and that damages everyone, especially the poor,” he said yesterday. He has triggered a furore ahead of his trip to the US, inflaming Republican climate change sceptics as his encyclical is unequivocal in affirming that climate change is mostly man made, and calls for an end to the use of fossil fuels as a source of energy.

Odd timing, too, when we have just had the hottest May on record, according to Nasa’s global temperature data, and the past 12 months have reached record levels. There is, they say, no pause in global warming – it’s a rising staircase instead of a ramp: we are now taking another upward step.

An odd day, too, for secretary of state for energy and climate change Amber Rudd’s provocative act, an aggressive riposte to yesterday’s lobby of parliament bringing people from all over Britain, from Polzeath and Aberdeen to press MPs on the urgency of action against climate change. Among those who came were some from the Somerset Levels, including a farmer who talked of her land still suffering from the damage done by the severe floods of the 2013/14 winter when the River Parrett overflowed.

In all of Somerset, there is only one wind turbine, due to small groups of protesters. But you might think the proposal of Ecotricity to put up just four turbines in the Parrett valley would have a fair wind. You would think the area had suffered so severely that it would be the obvious place. If not there, then where?

I visited the aptly named Black Ditch site, no beauty spot, but a scrubby piece of land beside the busy M5 motorway, by a demolished Royal Ordnance factory. The valley is crisscrossed in all directions by enormous pylons bestriding the countryside, carrying electricity from the nearby Hinkley Point nuclear power station.

In his last year, Pickles blocked 85% of windfarm projects, which lost over £500m in income and 2,000 scarce rural jobs

The turbines would have powered 6,769 homes but they were opposed by a small group and former department for communities and local government secretary Eric Pickles stopped it. In his last year, Pickles blocked 85% of windfarm projects, which lost over £500m in income and 2,000 scarce rural jobs, killing off investment in an industry providing the cheapest renewables. The EU reports that onshore wind is cheaper than coal, gas and nuclear energy when the cost of pollution is factored in, especially the high cost of climate change.

But the government will not only stop the subsidy for onshore wind projects, just as it is on the verge of becoming sustainable, but will also now let local councils and residents veto them. The likelihood is that small, vocal groups will stop them, regardless of wider local opinion, let alone national opinion. Renewables UK, speaking for the industry, warns that energy prices will rise as the governments cuts off the cheapest renewable energy supply, chilling future investment. This, remember, was going to be “the greenest government ever” until Cameron changed course and said “cut the green crap” instead. So, here goes the green crap.