Tories set to block Navitus Bay windfarm off Jurassic Coast
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Version 0 of 1. The government is expected to turn down an application for a £3.5bn windfarm off the south coast of England in what would be another major setback to green energy under the Conservatives. The decision on the Navitus Bay project off Bournemouth will be announced by Lord Bourne, the energy minister, on Friday just as 13 leading investors have written to the chancellor urging a more supportive attitude towards renewables. Bourne is likely to rule against the 121 turbines, each 200 metres high, being erected, fearing they would undermine another tourism industry, which benefits from the nearby Jurassic Coast, a Unesco world heritage site. The probable red light comes after furious lobbying against Navitus by Tory MPs in Dorset, local authorities and the National Trust. It will further alarm renewable energy industrialists and campaigners, given a recent government halt to subsidies for any more onshore windfarms, plus some aid to solar power and energy efficiency schemes. It would also be a blow to the windfarm developer, EDF, which is separately struggling to tie up a final agreement with Chinese backers that would enable it to proceed with the building of the £24.5bn Hinkley Point C nuclear plant. Meanwhile, investors including Legal & General, the Trillion Fund and the Church Commissioners have sent a letter to George Osborne, urging him to keep up the pace of decarbonising the economy. Simon Howard, the chief executive of the UK Sustainable Investment and Finance Association, said: “It is crucial that the government maintains the stable policy framework we have had over the past few years if it is to keep costs down and encourage investment in energy infrastructure. Sudden changes, like those being proposed [for solar], have serious consequences for companies and for investors.” The Department of Energy & Climate Change declined to predict the outcome of the decision on Navitus following an earlier recommendation by the planning inspectorate that the application be turned down. EDF of France, which is involved in a 50/50 joint venture with the Dutch firm Eneco, have promoted the scheme on the back of providing clean energy for 700,000 homes. They say it would create more than 1,700 construction jobs. EDF was not prepared to predict the outcome of the government decision on Thursday, insisting: “There is really nothing we can say.” It is not the first time that plans for an offshore windfarm have been declined but it is very rare. The only other example was when the then energy secretary Ed Davey shut the door on the Docking Shoal scheme off Norfolk. That decision was blamed on the number of Sandwich tern seabirds that could have been caught in the spinning blades and killed. The Conservatives have always indicated they prefer offshore wind farms to onshore turbines because they are much more often supported by locals – even though they are more expensive to build. The government had also been keen to support a pioneering industry that led the world. Offshore windfarms with the capacity to produce more than 5 gigawatts have been brought on stream so far in the UK but Germany is also working hard on offshore wind. High-profile Conservative politicians such as the business secretary, Sajid Javid, have spoken against it, though, and the South Dorset MP, Richard Drax, said it would “desecrate” the Jurassic Coast, named after the many fossils that have been found there. He told the BBC in June: “The crux is there are other places to put this windfarm, Navitus Bay has been controversial, flawed and deeply unpopular right from the start.” |