January 26, 2010
Action alerts, Environment, Law, Noise, Property values, Setbacks, U.K., Wildlife

National Policy Statement concerning renewable energy

Country Guardian

One of our supporters has brought the following to my attention and it would be good if you could respond with your comments.

The Government has published a draft set of National Policy Statements concerned with various large infrastructure projects. Of these, No.3 is concerned with Renewable Energy including onshore wind farms.

http://data.energynpsconsultation.decc.gov.uk/documents/npss/EN-3.pdf ^[1]

This section on onshore wind farms includes a number of points which we would consider to be undesirable or plain wrong:

• There is a section on “proximity to dwellings” which mentions “appropriate distances” but does not give any specific details of what might be appropriate.
• It claims that a wind farm of 25 years’ life (with an option to “repower”) is not to be considered permanent!
• It says that “there will always be significant landscape and visual effects” without saying that the wind farm should not be built if these are unacceptable.
• It states that ETSU-R-97 should be used for noise assessments without pointing out its multiple defects.
• it states that shadow flicker should be considered for a turbine within 10 rotor diameters of a house: I have not seen any justification for this distance.
• etc etc

There is a real opportunity to make your voice heard by making your points and comments. There is a deadline of February 22nd, so please act quickly.

http://www.nationalpolicystatements.org.uk/page2.html ^[2]
https://www.energynpsconsultation.decc.gov.uk/home/responding/ ^[3]

Spread the word to as many people as possible for them to put in comments, to try to get the Policy Statement changed? We need to all make our voices heard, irrelevant of the timescales involved.

Thanks in advance.

URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/alerts/2010/01/26/national-policy-statement-concerning-renewable-energy/

URLs in this post:

[1] http://data.energynpsconsultation.decc.gov.uk/documents/npss/EN-3.pdf: http://data.energynpsconsultation.decc.gov.uk/documents/npss/EN-3.pdf

[2] http://www.nationalpolicystatements.org.uk/page2.html: http://www.nationalpolicystatements.org.uk/page2.html

[3] https://www.energynpsconsultation.decc.gov.uk/home/responding/: https://www.energynpsconsultation.decc.gov.uk/home/responding/

Click here to print.