It looks tranquil, but Wales’ countryside has become Britain’s new energy battleground – where lucrative wind farm developments are generating not just electricity, but neighbourhood rows and punch-ups at public meetings.
Farmers have even allegedly been offered lap dances to surrender their land to turbines.
It follows a change in Welsh planning laws that has encouraged a surge in planning applications for giant wind turbines up to 800 feet tall – 2-3 times larger than any yet built in the principality.
Protest groups have sprung up in towns and villages from Anglesey in the north to Powys in the south – each fighting their own battle against what they see as the onslaught of the turbines.
“The impact on the Welsh landscape will be devastating,” says Julie Richards, campaigns officer at CPRW, the Welsh countryside protection charity. “Our cherished and beautiful landscapes are being altered forever.”
One of the most controversial – so far – is the Twyn Hywel Wind Farm on Mynydd Eglwysilan, a 1,200-foot hill in Caerphilly, near Pontypridd, where Bute Energy’s plans for 14 giant turbines have provoked uproar and lurid allegations in the local community.
The minutes of an emergency public meeting called last August by Nelson Parish Council, recorded lurid claims about a landowner alleging he was offered inducements to lease his land. Bute strongly refuted that allegation and the minutes have since been amended to remove the claim.
But councillor Gill Davies, 84, who sits as an independent on Nelson council, said the proposed wind farm would be a disaster.
She said: “Renewable energy is a good idea but destroying our landscape to produce it is too high a price.
“Wales has enough low-carbon energy already. The power from this wind farm will all be going to England, the money will go to the company and we will get nothing. And then the English wonder why we Welsh get stroppy.”
The arguments are not just about landscapes. Wind farm construction means drilling massive holes in the ground to install concrete foundations. It also means laying cables and building sub-stations. Usually a brand new road is needed too – so the construction phase often has huge impacts.
Once built, wind turbines can cause further disruption through “flicker” – caused by sunlight reflected off moving blades – and low level vibrations transmitted in the air or ground. Such prospects mean Welsh planning meetings have become heated or even aggressive.
Tim Smith, founder of Motvind UK, which works with anti-wind farm protest groups across Wales, recalls a local farmer punching a project manager on the chin at the start of a public planning meeting last year.
“The farmer had lost his some of his rented land because the landowner wanted to lease it to a windfarm. What he did was wrong but it was threatening his livelihood.”
Mr Smith is part of Save Gaerwen, a group fighting a “monstrous” wind farm project in Denbighshire, north east of Bala.
RWE, a German energy firm, wants to erect nine turbines each standing 660 feet tall – five times the height of the tallest local church.
RWE’s project newsletter admits that 77pc of local people are opposed to the project but said it still planned to go ahead.
Another Bute scheme, at Aberedw in Powys, will benefit the family of former royal nanny Tiggy Legge-Bourke, who now goes under the name Alexandra Pettifer.
Her brother Harry owns the 6,000-acre Glanusk Estate plus the 4,000 acres of land on Aberedw Hill where Bute wants to install 18 giant turbines that could earn him up to £500,000 a year.
Locals, reports the Mail on Sunday, are furious at losing their views with little compensation – and at the further threat of a string of pylons being built to carry the power from the windfarm to customers in England.
Ms Richards said the spate of applications for giant new wind farms followed the Welsh government’s new rules on wind developments. Until 2020, wind turbines were relatively small – less than 350 feet high.
However, in 2020, the Welsh government published its new policy, “Future Wales – the National Plan 2040”, with three crucial changes to the planning regime.
The first was that “large” wind energy developments should be decided by Labour ministers, not councils. “Large” meant anything over 10 megawatts – equivalent to just 2-3 turbines. It means almost all wind farm applications are now approved in Cardiff.
The second change introduced a “presumption in favour of large‑scale wind energy developments” – meaning more and taller turbines – up to 820 feet in height. Such massive machines were previously only deployed offshore.
Ms Richards said: “Developers are pushing this to the limit. The vast majority of new wind farm proposals are over 650 feet with some at 820 feet. Existing wind farms in Wales are half this size.”
The final key change was to create “Pre‑Assessed Areas for Wind Energy” – meaning vast tracts of Welsh countryside are deemed suitable for wind farms, whatever locals might think.
Ms Richards said: “These changes have opened the flood gates to developers, such as RWE and Bute Energy. But it’s Bute that has by far the greatest number of proposals.”
Bute confirms that it has 10 “energy parks” in planning with another six in the pipeline. And it also wants to build a network of pylons across Ceredigion and Carmarthenshire, to help carry its power around Wales and into England.
The largest is Lan Fawr, a wind farm in Ceredigion, where Bute wants to install 40 turbines, each with a capacity of 6.5 megawatts and standing up to 800-feet tall from ground to blade tip.
The company is already facing opposition from campaigners in Powys, who say its turbines and pylons will destroy beautiful landscapes.
Its three founders, Oliver Millican, Stuart George and Lawson Steele, said in a statement that they set up Bute to “leave a legacy for future generations … because climate change is the biggest challenge facing the world”. The company accounts showing they shared remuneration of £1.1m in the year to March 2023.
A Bute spokesman said: “If approved, our 16 projects would represent £3.2bn investment in infrastructure, producing a total of 2.1 gigawatts of clean green energy. This is enough clean electricity to power 2.25 million houses.”
For protest groups, however, the key issue is the number and size of turbines. Data from RenewableUK Cymru, the Welsh wind industry’s trade body, suggests there are already 220 operational wind projects in Wales comprising 1,010 turbines with a collective capacity of 1.3Gw.
That’s theoretically enough to power 900,000 homes, but the intermittency of wind means the real output would be a third of this. So their total output equates to a single fairly small power station.
Another 33 projects have planning permission and so will add 154 turbines to the total. A further 16 projects are awaiting planning consent, potentially adding another 104 – making a total of 1,268 turbines.
Jessica Hooper, director of RenewableUK Cymru, the Welsh wind industry’s trade body, claims most people living in Wales have a warm welcome for wind turbines on their hillsides – and don’t think they spoil the view.
“Last year RenewableUK Cymru commissioned a Welsh poll which showed that people living closest to wind farms are the greatest supporters of wind power. While the majority of Welsh respondents (65pc) said they support onshore wind, with only 9pc opposed, approval ratings rose to 72pc for those who live within five miles of a windfarm.”
A Welsh Government spokesman said: “Our policy and planning system supports well-designed renewable projects based on extensive public consultation.”
Such claims outrage protesters who also warn that the Welsh government’s manipulation of planning rules is a trial run for what will happen in England if and when Labour wins power.
England has seen almost no onshore wind developments for a decade after a rural backlash over the destruction of treasured landscapes forced the Conservative government into a U-turn.
But last year, Sir Keir Starmer pledged to more than double onshore wind – from the 15GW now to 35GW by 2030.
RenewableUK, the British wind energy trade body, estimates this would mean installing up to 3,000 large new wind turbines across England.
Asked what would happen if local communities across England also objected, Sir Keir added: “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.”
Labour, he said, he would “back the builders, not the blockers”.
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