Energy: Renewables

I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, on securing this debate on a very interesting subject. Your Lordships have many Questions on renewable energy, some of which the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, has led or taken part in, and it is good to be able to discuss this subject for a little longer in this debate. I will concentrate most of my remarks on wind energy. I start by following up a rather interesting answer that I got from my noble friend Lady Taylor on 7 February about the MoD objecting to many wind farm developments. The message that I have been getting from people in the industry is that the MoD tends to object informally to virtually every application that is submitted or every proposal that is discussed with it in advance of putting in a formal planning application. Therefore, it is probably not surprising that my noble friend Lady Taylor said: "““In the past three years we have objected to only 31 applications, and … raised no objection to 352 applications””.—[Official Report, 7/2/08; col. 1165.]" But there is the whole question of the costs of achieving planning permission, which I shall come on to later. If one has spent several years trying to get a decision out of the MoD before you put in a formal application, or if it changes its mind halfway through the process, it costs companies an awful lot of money. I know that the objections may only be informal, but there seems to be a certain inconsistency about the approach. I am talking primarily about land-based wind farms, but DBERR has produced plans for an enormous increase in wind farms across the North Sea, which seems a most excellent place to put them, and in the Thames Estuary. I find it very difficult to understand what the MoD’s real objections are. Apparently it is to do with the blades turning and causing clutter on radar screens, which means that those operating the radar screens cannot see what is behind the turbines for a fraction of a second if a plane is coming in. I look at what is on the other side of the North Sea and I see Belgium with rows and rows of wind farms along the coast. I think they have been there for 20 or 30 years. Germany has an enormous number of wind farms. I think that the Netherlands has two and so has Denmark. If the Belgian air force was going to invade us, would it fly over its own windmills, then go along the sea and would the MoD not be able to pick it up for a millisecond? Are we fighting the right war? I suspect that it the MoD could put a little bit of money into upgrading these radar screens—I know that it is very short of money but we could always cancel Trident or a few other things—and try to make it less difficult for these private-sector promoters to get their wind farm proposals through the planning system. Then you have to look at the North Sea, which has a large number of oil and gas rigs, as we all know. They have motors that go round and round. One would think that they would also show up on radar screens. Surely the difference between a wind turbine and an enemy aircraft is that the wind turbine is fixed in one spot, although it is going round, whereas an enemy aircraft is flying rather fast. One has to question whether there is a significant problem here or whether the MoD does not have the relevant resources. I am told by people who know much more about this than I do that its real problem is technical and procedural and concerns resources. One has to question whether it is using the proper analytical tools to assess wind farms. It is very difficult when it says, ““That’s all right. We think this farm will be all right””, but when the project is in its first or second year of development it suddenly says, ““Sorry, we’ve changed our mind. It’s not all right and you’d better go somewhere else””. A lot of money will have been spent by then. I hope that my noble friend’s reply will encourage the MoD to develop a better, more consistent process for dealing not just with formal applications, because it is probably too late by then, but with some of the informal approaches that always have to come first. That will require resources but a policy direction is needed. I was very pleased that my noble friend said in reply to my Oral Question that the MoD was fully in favour of wind farms. Therefore, I hope that this matter can be resolved quickly. If it is not, we shall not meet our targets; that is quite clear. A large number of companies are waiting to invest in these wind farms. The offshore visual intrusion is very small. The costs involved are a bit higher but it seems that we should push ahead with these structures—DBERR wants to proceed with all speed—as they would help to increase our proportion of renewable energy. Therefore, I hope that my noble friend will give me comfort that government will work collectively towards achieving this growth and that the MoD will be helped to come up with a consistent policy. The British Wind Energy Association very much welcomes draft PPS22, the planning guidelines, which are designed to bring consistency into the process. When you read that 50 per cent of applications in England are approved compared with 94 per cent in Scotland, you realise that that is a very big difference. When I find that Devon and Lancashire have rejected every application whereas Yorkshire has accepted 100 per cent of them, I think there is something wrong. I hope that PPS22, when approved, will move things forward so that we can have a consistent process for constructing these wind farms. The costs would then come down and that would benefit everyone. I have one last question for my noble friend. Something that worries me about renewable energy is the related price of oil. From her time at the Treasury, she will know that the price of oil in the Treasury forecasts is something like $57, whereas in Germany and France, the government think tanks are talking about $200. They cannot both be right. I realise that forecasting is always wrong, but I worry that the UK appears to be totally out of line with those two countries, our next-door neighbours. I do not know who is right, but it will affect just about everything we do in this country and it would be nice to know why the difference and whether the Treasury is rethinking it.