19 July 2015
The government is due to make a decision on whether to give the go ahead to the wind turbines, 9 to 12 miles off the Dorset coast, in September. A final decision made before the 11th of September 2015 will grant consent for either the full 970MW option or the 630MW option. The scheme could provide enough renewable energy for up to three quarters of a million homes – more than enough for every household in Dorset. The proposal also forms part of the government’s own target to provide 15% of energy from renewables by 2020.
Kelvin Clayton, Chair of the West and South Dorset Green Party said:
"We are telling the Prime Minister that off shore wind farms are among the cheapest ways of providing clean, safe, sustainable energy. We are also asking Mr. Cameron to explain why his government seems so keen to encourage people to protest over wind farms, while he is making it increasingly hard for local communities to object to fracking licences.
"We appreciate that many people are worried about the impact of the wind farm off the Dorset coast, but we believe anyone genuinely concerned with the future of the Jurassic Coast and our tourism industry should be a lot more alarmed at the prospect of fracking in Dorset than the presence of wind turbines miles out to sea".
In fact, there is no evidence that wind farms deter tourists. The Dorset project is also due to create hundreds of jobs and is aimed at giving an injection of cash into some of the most economically run down areas on the south coast. Portland is among the areas set to benefit from the jobs created. The proposal comes as the government’s own report last week warned that in rural areas fracking could depress house prices, increase heavy lorry traffic and threaten water supplies.
Kelvin added:
"Apart from these risks we simply need to find better ways of generating energy than taking fossil fuels out of the ground. Fracking is the technology of the past… offshore wind farms are the way forward. The real threat to Dorset’s prosperity and sustainability comes from global warming. Rising sea levels threaten not just Dorset’s World Heritage site but also the coastal communities living alongside it".
View the story on the Dorset Echo here.
A final decision made before the 11th of September 2015 will grant consent for either the full 970MW option or the 630MW option. After approval, construction would start in 2017. Turbine installation would start in 2019, aiming for completion at the end of that year.
The project needs port facilities for construction, operations and maintenance. Navitus is making billions of pounds of investments in this project and a large part will feed directly into the chosen port’s local economy. For example, for Portland Port, this would mean huge potential for employment and for subcontracted local businesses to be part of the supply chain.
Richard Drax’s opposition to this project is very disappointing in light of his public expressions regarding the need for local job generation. It will create potentially a minimum of 1,000 local jobs during construction and 100 permanent local jobs annually for its operational life.
It will also provide enough renewable energy to power up to 700,000 homes (double the total in Dorset) and we need this kind of investment to stay below the climate change safety limit of 2° C of warming.
The project is a joint venture between Dutch and French utility groups. Ideally, British state-owned utility companies should be making this kind of investment so that post-tax revenues would stay in our economy.
Although this kind of locally-sourced energy project enhances security of supply and creates jobs, smaller-scale community-run renewable sources would do this even better. This would generate local revenue and reduce the energy costs for everyone in the community.
Despite the drawbacks, this project will transform our local economy. We need to slow down the effects of climate change caused by man-made carbon emissions and to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. Renewable energy is increasingly cost efficient in comparison, but we need investment in projects like this to begin with.
Dorset trails behind its neighbouring counties in terms of percentage of energy produced by renewable sources. This is the perfect opportunity to catch up, and the jobs boost and business growth are an added bonus.
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