Clean energy for Wales

We should be more economical with energy. We cannot destroy the landscape with hundreds of windmills and power facilities.

Just to clarify, the quote I used about Pen y Cymoedd was not mine, I was quoting from the Welsh Government soils policy unit in a briefing note to the Cabinet Secretary, obtained under a FoI request. This is available now on the WG website So, not my words, but the words of the Welsh Government

DESNZ public attitudes tracker Copy of email sent to Ed Miliband on November 4th Dear Secretary of State I see that the summer 2025 public attitudes tracker questions are still likely to generate erroneous results To pick one, close to my heart, the question covering onshore wind farms "Now imagine there are plans for an onshore wind farm to e constructed in your local area. How happy or unhappy would you be about this? If you already have this in your local area, answer on the basis of how you feel about this now" Through my front window I see a dozen turbines of the Trysglwyn Wind Farm. They are 50 m high and 5 km away, so in my local area Based on these I would answer that I would be happy to have another dozen placed 5 km behind my house However, knowing that modern onshore turbines are at least 200 m high, there is no legal minimum distance from housing, and that in Wales they are being proposed 500 m from homes, I should answer that I would be extremely unhappy So just question could legitimately generate two very opposite answers! Similarly, the question on solar farms. Based on the little one powering Llangefni sewage treatment works in my local area, hidden behind high hedges, I would be very happy. However, I'm actually faced with the 3,000 acre Maen Hir development! Not all the questions are bad, but these two in particular are probably generating nonsense results  Please, get better questions and produce better analysis, or net zero itself is at risk from the populist right Cofion Dr Jonathan F Dean Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales

Just to clarify the CPRW position on wind power - it is essential to reach net zero However, a quick glance at the NESO Future Energy Scenarios reports over the past couple of years will show you … Wales currently uses about 15 TWh of electricity To reach net zero Wales will need about 40 TWh of electricity Wales has the potential to produce about 10 TWh from onshore wind And 70 TWh from offshore wind So with ONLY offshore wind Wales can easily achieve net zero levels of generation AND continue to export electricity to the rest of GB, but can never do it with onshore wind alone As such, onshore wind can only ever be a “bit part player” in the transition to net zero, while offshore wind will always do the heavy lifting This is confirmed in the Welsh Government pathway to 2035 report, and the Renewables U.K. Cymru response to the Future Wales consultation It is onshore wind which is helping fuel the “anti net zero” beliefs of populist politicians. It is putting net zero at risk of ever happening And finally, after yesterday’s announcement of eight 470 MW SMRs at Wylfa, which will produce about 30 TWh, why is this excluded from the Welsh Government’s targets? I’m well aware that nuclear is not renewable, but the climate doesn’t care, it’s all low carbon energy Those same SMRs will also “waste” about 60 TWh of heat into the sea, which could be used for domestic, industrial or agricultural heating via district heating networks if the SMRs were better located

I simply do not know where to start with the jaw dropping ignorance shown by this article. Wales should take the burden of industrial sized onshore wind installations because the Welsh countryside was destroyed in the past by coal extraction that contributed to excessive CO2 emissions? This is deeply strange and flawed logic.

As the contributor said below, all onshore turbines are not created equal. I am happy to see 7 x 60 m tall turbines out of my kitchen window, a couple of km away from my home. I am not happy with the natural habitats of our uplands being ripped up to the detriment of wildlife and nature when we have so few wild places left. Trecelyn windfarm are planning to cut down 70-odd mature trees to prevent bats roosting too close to their 145 m tall turbines. We have a climate emergency to respond to, but as one of the most nature-depleted countries on the planet, we in Wales need to ensure the renewable energy we generate is produced by working with nature, not destroying it.

As the dodgy companies who have moved into this can afford to pay off politicians and hire thugs to bully protestors, maybe their excessively large profit margins can be used to bring down prices even further, by higher taxes and then the option of nationalisation.

You are deluded if you think onshore wind is ‘green’. Quite apart from the resources required to make, ship and construct wind turbines, they are a source of toxic infrasound levels, microplastics and heavy metals pollution which is bio accumulative. The toxic legacy for future generations!

So we don't need Nuclear!

In my view, as a FIET and medium business owner, I feel the article is somewhat misleading; renewable energy costs are high, not because of the technology itself, but due to the significant "system costs" required to integrate intermittent sources like wind and solar into the grid. Paragraph 2 claims of cheap renewables are misleading because they fail to account for the necessary back-up generation (like gas and nuke), the need for new transmission infrastructure and storage to handle the variable output. The current system doesn’t help with highest wholesale price being pinned to gas, but renewables are not 3-4 times cheaper. We need to change because of national security and climate change, but such big savings costs are misleading and will ultimately put people off when they see their bills not coming down. Even as a pro renewable energy guy, I think we should be honest

Gordon James simplistically presents industrial onshore wind as “clean and cheap”. For small rural communities like ours, targeted for 220-metre industrial turbines, that rosy picture looks dangerously naïve and out of touch with emerging scientific evidence on three critical counts.  Firstly, acoustic science has recently changed irrevocably. Peer-reviewed research by Professor Ken Mattsson (Uppsala University) demonstrates that infrasound and low-frequency noise (ILFN) from modern wind turbines is significantly higher—and travels far further—than earlier industry models assumed.1 This renders the UK’s current noise standards, which entirely ignore ILFN, scientifically obsolete. Based on her own research2, Dr Ursula Maria Bellut-Staeck (Faculty of Medicine, Dalhousie University) concludes that “humans, animals and plants within a radius of at least 10 km can be harmed by far-reaching emissions from industrial wind turbine installations.” Taken together, and reinforced by decades of research into the physiological impacts of ILFN by Professor Mariana Alves-Pereira and her team at Lusófona University, Lisbon3, this convergence of findings is now impossible to ignore.  Second, the “clean, green” label collapses under material scrutiny. Gordon James must surely know that wind turbines use permanent magnets made from rare-earth elements such as neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium and terbium. Mining and refining these metals produces extreme toxic and radioactive waste.  As widely documented by the BBC, The Guardian, and multiple independent investigations, Baotou in China houses a vast toxic lake, 10km by 2km, which visiting researchers have described as feeling “like hell on earth”, with ”dozens of pipes lining the shore, churning out a torrent of thick, black, chemical waste from the refineries that surround the lake.”  The local population suffer from cancer rates 70 times higher than the rest of the country, with many being treated in a 20-story hospital dedicated purely to bone medicine.4 On this basis alone, James’ claim that wind power is ‘clean’ is factually indefensible. Industrial wind turbines are simply not “friends of the earth”.  Third, microplastics: recent engineering studies of wind-turbine blade erosion estimate that onshore turbines shed roughly 8–50 grams of composite microplastic per blade per year through leading edge erosion, with additional losses of 40–160 g per blade per year from maintenance and repair.5 Early field and modelling studies around offshore wind farms show microplastics from blade erosion accumulating in surrounding waters and sediments, yet the long-term behaviour of these particles in soil, freshwater systems and food chains remains largely unstudied. I fully support a transition away from fossil fuels. But when ILFN, rare-earth extraction, and microplastic shedding are taken into account, the notion that vast industrial wind complexes in upland communities are ‘clean’ is impossible to sustain. One set of externalities (fossil fuels) are simply being exchanged for another (chronic microplastic and chemical shedding) with unknown long-term consequences. With regard to James’ moralising claim that Wales must atone for past coal emissions by accepting today’s industrial wind colonisation, the logic is both historically selective and ethically misplaced. Small rural communities like ours should not be made to feel duty-bound to sacrifice their uplands to atone for previous rounds of profit-driven resource extraction. Gordon James employs the term “landscapist” as a pejorative, but this is one of the few things he inadvertently gets right. I am someone who places the landscape — its ecosystems, habitats, waters and cultural inheritance — above the greed-driven interests of corporate wind developers’ shareholders. This is environmentalism in its most basic, grounded form. As someone who has spent decades campaigning for the protection of the environment, James should understand this better than anyone. Apparently not. In the interests of public and environmental health, the pragmatic logic of the Precautionary Principle must now be applied, and the headlong rush toward massive industrial-scale wind complexes brought to a halt. Notes 1. Efficient finite difference modelling of infrasound propagation in realistic 3D domains: Validation with wind turbine measurements, Ken Mattsson et al, Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University (Applied Acoustics, 2025). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0003682X25006280 2. A fundamental basis for all living creatures, mechanotransduction, is significantly endangered by periodic exposure to impulsive infrasound and vibration from technical emitters - in particular cardiovascular and embryological functions. Dr. Ursula Maria Bellut-Staeck, Faculty of Medicine, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Canada (SCIREA Journal of Clinical Medicine, Volume 10, Issue 2, April 2025). https://article.scirea.org/pdf/321372.pdf  3. https://ulusofona.academia.edu/marianaAlvesPereira 4. Baotou Iron & Steel to Expand Vast Toxic Lake Dump at Inner Mongolia Rare Earths Complex, Pratap Chatterjee, CorpWatch, June,2025  https://www.corpwatch.org/article/baotou-iron-steel-expand-vast-toxic-lake-dump-inner-mongolia-rare-earths-complex 5. Microplastics Emission from Eroding Wind Turbine Blades: Preliminary Estimations of Volume, Leon Mishnaevsky Jr. et al. (Energies, Vol 17, Issue 24, 2024). https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/17/24/6260 Paul Swann Llanfihangel Nant Brân Coordinator, Amddiffyn Mynydd Epynt  (writing in a personal capacity)

So much to unpick here, but what leapt out at me was the classic victim blaming, that 'Wales has a duty' to compensate for previous use of fossil fuels. I don't think the Welsh population had much choice in the 19th and 20th century exploitation of their country.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/contracts-for-difference-cfd-allocation-round-6-results/contracts-for-difference-cfd-allocation-round-6-results-accessible-webpage Did that and? It clearly shows wind power being one of the cheapest. Off shore is naturally the more expensive of the renewables due to its complexity (you try putting a wind turbine off shore). The most expensive according to last years strike prices, was Tidal Stream energy, but this is relatively new tech (also difficult). Gas is not on the list because no new gas power station eligible for a strike price.

Clean energy is essential — but what’s happening in rural Wales is not a fair or balanced transition. Communities are being asked to sacrifice their landscapes, heritage, wildlife and way of life for vast industrial-scale schemes that export power and profits elsewhere, while local infrastructure, biodiversity and democratic processes are sidelined. We are not against renewables — far from it — but we need a genuinely responsible approach that protects fragile environments, respects rural communities, and stops treating Wales as a dumping ground for oversized wind farms, pylons and associated roads. A just transition cannot be built on environmental harm and community disregard.

There might well be an "extensive peat and habitat restoration programme" going on at Pen y Cymoedd, "expertly guided by NRW." Could this by any chance be the same NRW whose expert at the Royal Welsh Show a couple of years ago pointed out to me that peat grows at a rate of 1cm every 10 years? The same NRW that no doubt works with the Welsh Government's own soil expert, who strongly believed that Bute Energy's Twyn Hywel wind farm should not be approved because of the destruction of peat that it would cause. All jolly words, "extensive programme" "expertly guided" but when you look behind them it's a bit of a vacuum ..

You said check last years contracts for difference... those are last years contract for difference. The point to be resolved is not the actual prices, but whether onshore is more expensive than other forms of energy, which they are not. Or are you suggesting that Tidal Stream or Off shore did not go up just as much, or than Nuclear is not wildly more expensive? (As would be setting up a new gas powerstation).

The costs cited are out of date. Plus, in DESNZ’s own words: "the simplicity of the [costs] measure means that there are factors which are not considered". These factors include back-up, balancing, grid expansion & the constraint payments which are required for intermittent generation. At a recent DESNZ Committee, the Big 6 energy suppliers gave evidence that even if wholesale (generation) costs fell to zero, electricity bills would remain high because of all these mounting add-on costs. Grid upgrades and expansion alone are estimated to cost in the region of £100bn across GB over the coming years. That would equate to over £5bn paid from Wales electricity bills. To pay for the proposed works themselves but to also satisfy distant shareholders’ expectations. And electricity is only around 1/3 of overall energy use. Wales spends between £5-10bn on all energy - electricity, heat, transport fuels - EVERY YEAR (someone needs to work out exactly how much). The vast majority of that money floods out of Wales. Yesterday, Nation Cymru reported on Bridgend Council’s massive £100bn cost to try and reach “unachievable” Welsh Government net zero targets by 2030. Bridgend and every public sector body, business and home in Wales faces continued high energy costs and also a UK Budget which may slap a tax on EV cars and the removal of heat pump grants. It’s all getting more expensive and complex. Why pursue policies which are evidently self-harming and extractive? In a country which is so energy rich, why is there so much fuel poverty? And what use windfarms on the hills when the power is cut in the valleys below from floods (Monmouth, right now) or wind itself (Storm Darragh, last year - more storms forecast)? Energy resilience should be a top priority. We do need to “do something”? But the starting point is to craft policies which deliver clean, reliable and affordable energy for Wales. Which are appropriate for Wales. Which retain and create wealth out of energy. And where a small country makes a meaningful contribution to a global problem - that means developing clean tech which can be exported. And then there’s the question of all the critical and rare earth minerals which are required to deliver the current approach. Do we know where they come from and at what cost - not just budgetary but to people and the environment in distant countries? Wales needs to reboot energy and climate policy.

If we got rid of all other forms of generation, how many wind turbines and acreage of solar panels would we need to satisfy Wales power needs?