The fight to save Radnor Forest

Jonty Colchester, CPRW, The Welsh Countryside Charity, Chairman.

Here in Powys, as in many other parts of Wales, we are bracing for a torrent of planning applications for onshore wind farms.

These are now on a scale never previously envisaged in England or Wales. The thirty-one turbines proposed for the ‘Nant Mithil Energy Park’ on top of the picturesque Radnor Forest in South-East Powys, are up to 220 metres high.

This is 30 metres higher than the BT Tower in London.

There are no onshore turbines of this height operating anywhere in Britain. Even getting the components into position will be a massive undertaking, not to speak of the 25m diameter bases demanding thousands of cubic metres of concrete.

The logistics of moving these huge elements in to position up and across the Radnor Forest will require kilometres of roads capable of dealing with 80-metre blade loads up some steep corrugated inclines. The Radnor Forest is not a plateau. The landscape will be industrialised.

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Bute Energy

This proposal is being made by Bute Energy, a speculative development company funded by offshore money in the shape of ‘Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners’ in Luxembourg. Bute Energy has never built or operated a wind farm.

Can this seriously be the way to implement a policy which is a national priority?

We are all familiar with the realities of climate change and its seemingly inexorable progress is amply evidenced with each passing year.

But as Wales is self-sufficient in alternative energy with the already permissioned on-shore and already committed Celtic Sea off-shore facilities, the destination for all this additional energy is South-East England.

Yet under the present plan, the electricity from Nant Mithil (and its two sister South Radnorshire wind farms also being proposed) is to be conveyed on pylons down the Tywi Valley to near Carmarthen, i.e. 70 miles in the wrong direction, from where it can join the huge transmission line to urban parts of England.

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UK grid

This plan is completely independent of the National Grid’s carefully analysed and professionally executed 2024 plans for the re-configuration of the entire UK grid to meet the forecast needs of the climate emergency.

The future needs of Wales (which will grow as electricity replaces carbon fuels) will be more than met by offshore wind, which nearly twice as efficient as onshore wind as there is more wind.

In common with many of the other presently proposed onshore sites, (For example, on the unspoiled flanks of Pumlumon) Radnor Forest is an area of great beauty and natural habitat.

Perhaps with unintentional irony, Bute Energy has actually named the development after the Nant Mithil & Cwm Blithus Site of Special Scientific Interest on the western flank where an ancient brook has carved a beautiful miniature canyon rich in rare wildlife.

In addition to the Climate Emergency the Welsh Government has recognised a Nature Emergency, yet somehow nature and biodiversity always slide down the order of priority when it comes to proposed developments.

It was ever thus. The future of our glorious hills and traditional Welsh settlements drive a thriving local tourist industry attracting visitors from all around the world. Our uplands act as a hugely effective carbon sequestration sink, identified by Deiter Helm, the world-famous Oxford economist studying the future of our environment, as the greatest contribution Wales can make to combating climate change.

Future generations will never know the countryside we love. Mid-Wales is at risk from a Scottish property developer making millions out of our precious landscape.

Is Welsh Government really going to let this happen? Are we?