20140406_R4
Source: BBC Radio 4
URL: N/A
Date: 06/04/2014
Event: Jacob Rees-Mogg on onshore wind: "you're introducing high costs for people, for no real benefit"
Attribution: BBC Radio 4, Broadcasting House
People:
- Jon Adriaenssens: Landlord, Bell and Bear pub
- Caroline Ellis: Emberton resident
- Edward Ellis: Emberton resident
- Paul Flowers: Councillor, Emberton Parish Council
- Maria McCaffery: Chief Executive, RenewableUK
- Paddy O'Connell: BBC radio presenter
- Jacob Rees-Mogg: Conservative MP, North East Somerset
Paddy O'Connell: Where do you stand, on windfarms? The Coalition partners can't agree on how useful they are, and neither can many communities, where they are to be found. Over the last few days, a gust from the Conservatives hinted at capping onshore turbines by 2020. We've live debate, after this trip to one village.
* * *
[Sounds of digging.]
Paddy O'Connell: The sight of another man forking is always very peaceful and very enjoyable, and I've stopped here by a rather bemused gentleman in the village of Emberton - it's about a 20-minute drive from Milton Keynes. And there was a big controversy here over plans for a windfarm, and I've come to ask people what they think, about what happened then and now that it's been built.
I went to the house of Caroline and Edward Ellis, early opponents of plans for a windfarm near the village.
Edward Ellis: Very, very few people in the area approved of the idea of a windfarm in the area.
Caroline Ellis: They were talking about things working at about 20% efficiency, and it doesn't seem to me worth all that hassle, for that sort of efficiency.
Paddy O'Connell: What would your advice be, to another community facing an application?
Caroline Ellis: Oppose it.
Paddy O'Connell: You're not convinced.
Caroline Ellis: I'm not convinced.
Paddy O'Connell: Next, to see Paul Flowers. He sits on the parish council. He also allocates money from the community fund, raised by the windfarm's owners.
Paul Flowers: You get the odd grumble and the odd sarcastic comment about it. But I think some of the tales of problems with wildlife and with - and with noise and interference are proved to be ill-founded. So they really perhaps haven't got that much to complain about. A lot of people in villages want them to be museums. Well, we have telegraph poles and cars and all the things the Victorians never had, so, er... Why not?
Paddy O'Connell: Then, a quick spin in the car to the site itself.
[In the car.] So we're driving at about 30 miles an hour up a country lane. There are telegraph poles, and we're coming over a small hill, and there, on the horizon, are - I mean, how many are there?
Paul Flowers: Er, seven of them, I believe. They are quite large when you're this close. Don't know the exact size of them, but they're big.
Paddy O'Connell: I must say that they're all turning, and sometimes you see them and they're stationary, which makes objectors even more furious - well, they go to all the trouble, they don't turn. So do you understand why there's been a big row in the countryside about them? You're living in a village - do you know why there's an argument?
Paul Flowers: Mainly unsightly, maybe - mainly NIMBY and also the fact that, um, if people are not bothered about them, they are when they come to where they live, so they want someone else to have them. But everyone wants someone else to have them - someone's got to have them.
Paddy O'Connell: So I'm standing underneath the sign for the pub, the Bell and Bear. And there, in the distance, couple of miles away, I can see one of the seven wind turbines. In we go. It's important to do research in a pub. And Jon the landlord's agreed to speak to me.
Jon Adriaenssens: It was a talking point, most definitely. The local villagers were, you know, concerned about the impacts for themselves and for their views from their houses and their gardens.
Paddy O'Connell: If they moved windfarms only offshore, would that sort the argument out, or would it just move the argument to the coast?
Jon Adriaenssens: It just moves the argument to the coast, because people who live on the coast, they spend a lot of money to buy their houses, to have that beautiful view, you know, to look out across the English Channel, the North Sea, the Solent, and then they realise that, you know, this has been spoilt by turbines. I mean, one man's "spoil" is another man's "beauty" as well, you know, so there are many people that think they look fantastic, you know. And lots of people now, they're up there, they're taking photographs and, you know, they think they look great. And other people, they absolutely abhor them.
Paddy O'Connell: And there we see how to be the landlord in a small pub.
Jon Adriaenssens: Yeah, it's the way forward, I think.
* * *
Paddy O'Connell: He also said that opinions do change from 7 to 11, for mysterious reasons. That's Jon, the landlord in the village, there. Listening, and to discuss onshore windfarms, I'm joined by Maria McCaffery, Chief Executive of RenewableUK - hello, Maria.
Maria McCaffery: Hello.
Paddy O'Connell: And Jacob Rees-Mogg is Conservative MP for North East Somerset. Now Jacob Rees-Mogg, where do you stand, on windfarms?
Jacob Rees-Mogg: Um, I'm not broadly in favour of them, partly because they're dependent on subsidies, to make the economics work. And those subsidies have to be paid for out of people's electricity bills, and that means that people have higher electricity bills because of the windfarms.
Paddy O'Connell: And do you support a cap, in the future, on onshore windfarms?
Jacob Rees-Mogg: Oh, I'd support a cap now - I don't think it needs to be in the future. Just one figure for you - last month, £8.7 million was spent to give 27 windfarms money not to produce electricity. So you're introducing high costs for people, for no real benefit.
Paddy O'Connell: I saw that reported in the Telegraph yesterday - is it a Coalition deal-breaker, this? Because that's what the talk's all about, at the moment, isn't it, difference between the two partners.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: Well, the Coalition only has just over a year to go, so I think it's a matter of the next manifesto - I don't think it's an immediate deal-breaker.
Paddy O'Connell: Right. Maria McCaffery, you must be very dismayed to hear a lawmaker so unimpressed with your technology.
Maria McCaffery: Yes, we have been dismayed. But I'd like to, if my may, just respond to the two points that Jacob just made, the first one being the cost to the consumer of the support mechanism. Ofgem's just released its figures for 2012-13 full year - that translates into less than 35 pence a week, to an average domestic consumer, that's the first thing. And the second one was the £8.7 million in constraints payments - and that's true, but a very, very important fact that keeps being overlooked here, is that that amounts to less than 5% - less than 5, so - of the total amount that's paid right across the board for power generation, so if we wanted to compare that, sensibly, with the cost of thermal plant, like the plant that's produced from - the electricity that's produced from gas and coal, and so on, it would be 20 times that amount, so it really needs to be considered in context.
Paddy O'Connell: Thank you for giving us that, because, in other words, 5p in every hundred is keeping them stationary, you're saying. And if we look at nuclear and all the decommissioning, there are other costs. But let's just get to the gut of this. Jacob Rees-Mogg, the phrase used to be NIMBYm didn't it - "Not In My Back Yard". But we've actually got BANANA now, haven't we - "Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone". The problem is, people want energy but they don't want the generation.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: Well, they'll get energy more cheaply and more securely if they have gas-powered plants. So I don't think you actually need windfarms, and so you're putting up something that is ugly, that despoils the environment, basically on a green agenda. It seems to me nonsense to have a green agenda that makes the environment more ugly.
Paddy O'Connell: Maria?
Maria McCaffery: The views just expressed are those of a very, very small minority. There is survey after survey after survey that's consistently returning levels of between two thirds and three quarters of the population are supportive specifically of onshore wind - now I'm not talking generally about renewables, I mean onshore wind. So the question we have to ask is: why would we want to impede deployment of the lowest-cost form of power generation? Government energy policy rests on three pillars - sustainability, energy security and affordability.
Paddy O'Connell: Right. And, to you in the industry, does it seem like the husky-cracking [sic] David Cameron has dropped his whip? Does it seem to you that the Conservatives are lower down the pecking order of parties who are on your side, Maria McCaffery?
Maria McCaffery: Well, we are a little disappointed in what promised to be the "greenest government ever", and we are calling on the Prime Minister to intervene very promptly and very firmly, It seems that there's a small number of MPs who are using wind energy as a - as a very short-term political football, and -
Paddy O'Connell: Is Jacob Rees-Mogg one of them?
Maria McCaffery: I'm - well, he sounds like, although I've never had any direct engagement, before. All right, but the long -
Paddy O'Connell: Let him react, let him react, Maria -
Maria McCaffery: - but the long-term consequences -
Paddy O'Connell: No, we haven't got time for the whole future - Jacob, you're one of these MPs using wind for your own purposes.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: Look, well, I'm guilty as charged, in that I'm doubtful about wind energy, and I want my constituents to have cheap energy. And there's a problem of energy poverty in this country. I would say, on the Conservative Party's position, that it was a different world in 2007. At that point, the world economy was booming, and lots of other countries were adopting a green agenda, apparently quite quickly. That's all changed - we're in a time of austerity and we can't afford the extravagance of some of these policies.
Paddy O'Connell: What about - all right, go on, Maria.
Maria McCaffery: Is it not then perverse that you're proposing to take away the least-cost form of power generation that addresses all of the requirements of energy policy, when the only consequence of that will be to put something more expensive in its place? And that means higher costs to the consumer - all energy consumers.
Jacob Rees-Mogg: We've got a great deal of coal, which would be a good deal cheaper.
Paddy O'Connell: Right, I mean, one thing -
Maria McCaffery: And very polluting.
Paddy O'Connell: Let's - I hope we come to discuss the coal supplies of our country in another programme. Finally, to you both... Jacob Rees-Mogg, have you ever seen a windmill, anywhere, that you thought was beautiful, a beautiful swirling turbine, bringing machine and nature together, looking gorgeous?
Jacob Rees-Mogg: Yes I have, actually. I think they can - when they're on their own, they can look absolutely stunning. I'll probably upset all my electors, but I think the individual one on the Mendip Hills, seen from a distance - usually it happens to be stationary, but never mind - is rather stunning.
Paddy O'Connell: And to you. Maria McCaffery, when you hear people who are anxious about the technology, do you understand what their fears are?
Maria McCaffery: I think we've invested very heavily in trying to understand and to try to work with them and to engage. In the earlier part of the programme, you referred to people who had come to accept them from a starting point that was very negative, and our biggest supporters are those who have personal experience and been won over.
Paddy O'Connell: Thank you very much. Thank you, both, for talking to us this morning.