North lacks power in green energy

Jul 13 2009 by Paul Loraine, The Journal

At present, there are planning applications for wind farms in the North East representing 360MW of capacity still awaiting a decision from local authorities. A review of the three years between April 2006 to April 2009, showed that only 78MV of capacity was approved by local authorities.

Don Brownlow, of the Moorsyde Action Group set up to oppose a development close to Berwick, said the Government were putting “unreasonable emphasis on wind power generation” by setting “arbitrary targets”.

“Many of the delays in wind applications have been caused by the very poor quality of applications from small speculative development companies with little experience of major planning applications and the sheer pressure of work caused by these applications on small planning authorities,” he said.

“Short-circuiting planning safeguards will only encourage bad applications on poorly chosen sites.”

Sir Alan Beith, Liberal Democrat MP for Berwick, said: “These sites are attractive areas and it’s not surprising that there are arguments going on.

“My own view on how the applications have been handled up to now is that sometimes the sites are within viewing distance of each other and that’s not very satisfactory. It doesn’t take account of the accumulation of wind farms.

“There is no shortage of applications and I suspect that the operators who want to run them are just pushing to get more of these through.”