And while the Greens are doing what they do best (opposing green development), the Labour government has already lifted the Tory ban on onshore windfarms.
This is odd, because Labour are the same as the Tories, as we all know, and the Greens are a radical new force. But in this case, Labour are doing the direct opposite of the Tories, while the Greens are doing the same things the Tories did! Most curious.
EDIT: Here’s the official government statement confirming this.
EDIT 2: And this isn’t all! Rachel Reeves is also planning to do more to make onshore wind simpler to build.
Fuck yes. I live very close to a wind farm and can see them from my window. They’re marvels and, alongside the several local solar farms too, it’s such a positive feeling knowing that, regardless of the weather, clean energy is being created.
I know plenty oppose these things but having grown up next to a coal power plant, I’ll take a stunning wind turbine any day over those giant cooling tower monstrosities.
I think a lot of people struggle to tell the difference between something that changes the view and something that ruins the view. Wind turbines will change a view, of course, because they’re a new addition. But there’s no sense in which they make it worse!
But anything new is bad! Everything must remain the way it never was!
When the national grid was being established a lot of people were very against the pylons being erected for very similar reasons that people are against wind farms. But who wants to stand up and say they want to go back to a time where having electricity in your household wasn’t a normal thing now?
People don’t want power lines, solar panels, coal plants, wind turbines, etc. But of course they all want electricity. It just doesn’t make sense.
Look, I get my internet through the air, why can’t you send my electricity through the air?
gets struck by lightning
Fully agree. People travel for thousands of miles to see the windmills in the Netherlands. They’re no different and the beautiful white and curved designs makes them look like a true wonder of modern engineering achievement.
we just need to paint a brick pattern on the base of wind turbines
Arguably anything man-made makes a view worse, but as far as man-made structures go they’re beautiful. And they give you a free wind gauge just by looking out the window. I’d rather see thousands of turbines on the horizon vs the glow of oil fields or plumes of smoke/steam.
I live relatively close to an offshore wind farm as well as a number of onshore turbines. I like them and don’t feel they detract from the view - at night the red warning lights look amazing.
When the offshore ones were being planned a neighbour objected and had an artist’s impression made of the view of them from his house. It made the papers and we solidly took the piss out of him because that view would only be possible if you built a crow’s nest on a long poll right on top of his house and used binoculars.
What was it like next to a coal plant? Did you get ash? Coughing fits?
asthma. So much asthma. The area I grew up had 3 coal plants and the highest rates of asthma in the country, supposedly.
so, yes.
No ash or dark fumes emitted - I assume did something clever underground to capture or filter it. But plenty of steam billowed out of the cooling tower. During cooler parts of the year, the steam would freeze and turn into snow which was a lot of fun to go and have a snowball fight in late autumn.
But then again, I’m possibly just blissfully ignorant and lung cancer will get me any day now.
Ash separators and flue gas desulphurisation. That keeps the stack from having grey/brown or yellow fumes, which would contain the ash as solids to drop out or the sulphur dioxide that contributes to acid rain. Cooling towers are of course only water vapour, so as long as the visible emission of the central thin stack on a coal power station is white, it’s running clean.
Ash only once when the filters failed. You’d occasionally get “power station frost”. If the wind was in the right direction on freezing days moisture from the cooling towers would freeze to give a 100m wide avenue of thick haw frost. There’s a lot of big transmission lines that aren’t pretty and buzz when it rains. (wind/solar don’t need lines this big)
Sewage dumping in the rivers and shores next please
Water boards already get fined for this. The problem is that paying the fine is cheaper than paying to fix the massively outdated infrastructure.
The only way to make the bastards responsible stop is jail time. The companies and the people who run them have more than enough money to pay the fines.
Renationalise them. Zero compensation. They’ve already sucked it dry of profits over the last 35 years, so I figure what’s left is ours.
I’m paying nearly £700 a year to have my shit put in the river, and I have no choice in what company it goes to. That’s not how privatisation should work. I’m basically a fucking serf.
Good. The more renewable energy the better!
Not OPs fault of course but its only “absurd” if you choose to forget that the tories are bought and paid for by the oil and gas lobbies.
That was quick.
There was talk of them getting some quick wins in, because Tony Blair did something similar in 1997. It helps you signal that there’s been a change. Both the planning changes (like this) and stopping the Rwanda deportations have been heavily-discussed so it makes sense to get them out early.
The specific things I recall were the FOIA (which Blair later came to regret; the tine to strike with such things is while the fires of idealism still burn hot) and removing the control of interest rates from the Treasury - the Tories had been royally fucking the economy with that in the years running up to the election. Imagine if Truss had her hands on that lever.
Frightening!
removing the control of interest rates from the Treasury
That’s the one they mentioned on the radio.
Yeah, thise were two things directly aimed at the misbehaviour of the outgoing government.
Ah, those heady days, before shouting “nonsense!” at Jack Straw would gwt you arrested under the (woefully badly-written) Prevention of Terrorism Act. It’s almost as though power corrupts (and the office of the Home Sec in particular is enough to break the morals of anyone).
The cheapest form of energy just got the green light. This will do a lot of good further down the line.
I don’t disagree but damn this reads like a propaganda piece
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Last September, Michael Gove, then communities secretary, said the ban would be lifted; rules put in place by David Cameron in 2015 decreed that a single planning objection could scupper an onshore wind project.
Analysis of the government’s renewable energy planning database found that no applications for new onshore wind projects were submitted after Gove’s announcement.
The end of the ban was promised in Labour’s election manifesto and trailed by the new energy secretary, Ed Miliband, when he was in opposition, but campaigners were surprised by the speed at which it has been implemented.
Mike Childs, the head of science, policy and research at Friends of the Earth, said: “By ending the onshore wind ban in England, Labour is making an important stride towards delivering on our climate goals, while also paving the way for lower bills, as renewables produce some of the cheapest and cleanest energy available.
By harnessing the country’s vast renewable power potential, the new government is staking its claim as a global leader in the green energy transition.”
Dr Doug Parr, Greenpeace’s chief scientist, added: “As the recent gas price crisis shows, this ban was self-defeating for energy security, costly, and lost opportunities to cut emissions.
The original article contains 625 words, the summary contains 200 words. Saved 68%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
