Less than a week after the elections which brought Labor back to power in the United Kingdom, the new government is lifting the measure which prevented the development of new onshore wind fields in the country. This is the first step towards London’s stated objective of doubling this wind energy by 2030.
Britain’s new Labor finance minister set out her priorities last week, and the reintroduction of onshore wind is one of them. “Starting today, we end the absurd ban on onshore wind power in England,” Rachel Reeves announced in a speech to business leaders in London.
The new British government wasted no time. Since 2015, building a new onshore wind farm in the United Kingdom has been almost mission impossible. However, there was no moratorium strictly speaking, but a document that looked like one, governing construction and imposing drastic conditions, applicable only to onshore wind turbines.
These projects could only be developed in areas defined by development plans, local planning orders or where the proposal had received community support. According to the new government, this was often interpreted as the impossibility of carrying out the project without absolute unanimity.
The minister generally promised to reform land use planning rules deemed “outdated” and which “leave too many important projects blocked for years and years” before even being started, also recalling the promise of the Labor Party to build 1.5 million homes.
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