Tory leadership hopeful and former chancellor Rishi Sunak promised to “scrape” the outgoing prime minister Boris Johnson‘s plans to relax a ban on onshore wind farms. He swore to uphold David Cameron‘s ban on the construction of new onshore wind farms and said on Wednesday 20 July: “I want to reassure communities that as Prime Minister I would scrap plans to relax the ban on onshore wind in England, rather than focus on the building more offshore turbines.”
A YouGov poll last September found that 62 percent of Tory voters would support the construction of an offshore wind farm in their area, while only 28 percent would oppose it.
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Liberal Democrats energy spokesman Wera Hobhouse said Mr Sunak’s pledge showed “he is completely out of touch with reality”.
She explained: “Any assumed energy security strategy without onshore wind just makes no sense.
“Onshore wind farms can be up and running in about a year and provide cheap clean power for bill payers.”
The UK generated a staggering 24 percent of its electricity from wind in 2020, enough to power 18.5 million homes, the government said.
In March, Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said the UK needed a major “gear” in onshore wind farms to cut energy bills.
He also said it would help ensure energy supplies, as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine put a strain on Europe’s gas and energy security.
At the time, Tory MP Bob Blackman said: “It would be a total disaster. It’s extremely unpopular, they’re ugly and they don’t necessarily produce enough energy.
“I think when we start with energy supply, it has to be fracking, not onshore wind.”
Outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged to deliver up to 50 gigawatts from offshore wind farms – enough to power every home in the UK – by 2030 in his government’s energy security strategy published in April.
The strategy also promised to reduce the approval process from four to one year, but we have not set any targets for onshore wind.
Some argue that onshore wind farms are preferable because they can be built faster and cheaper than offshore wind farms.
But despite calls for more onshore wind energy, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) signaled that only “a limited number” of onshore wind farms would continue.
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BEIS said: “We will discuss developing partnerships with a limited number of supporting communities willing to host new onshore wind infrastructure in exchange for guaranteed lower energy bills.”
Tory MPs opposed plans to increase onshore wind generation and an effective ban has been in place since 2015.
In 2012, 101 Conservative MPs signed a letter to the then Prime Minister, Mr Cameron, against onshore wind farms.
The letter called for the withdrawal of subsidies for onshore wind farms and for the planning system to “take due account of the views of the local population”.
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