England is not windy enough to sustain any more onshore wind turbines, the industry’s trade body has admitted.
Hugh McNeal, the head of RenewableUK, said that while there was a case for more onshore wind farms to be built elsewhere, wind speeds in England meant new plants were economically unviable without a subsidy.
The benefits of onshore windfarms have divided political opinion, with supporters claiming they generate the cheapest energy in Britain. Critics claim they are ineffective and blight the countryside.
Last year the government stopped any new public subsidies for them.
McNeal, who joined the industry body from the Department of Energy and Climate Change two months ago, told The Sunday Telegraph that new windfarms in England would not be able to compete with the price of power produced from gas. Some gas plants are eligible for government subsidies.
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He said: “We are almost certainly not talking about the possibility of new [onshore] plants in England. The project economics wouldn’t work; the wind speeds don’t allow for it.”
The admission came despite McNeal maintaining windfarms were now the cheapest form of new energy generation in Britain.
He added: “If plants can be built in places where people don’t object to them and if, as a result of that, over their whole lifetime the net impact on consumers against the alternatives is beneficial, I need to persuade people we should be doing that.”
He said that any windfarms already planned for England would have secured government subsidies.
Keith Anderson, chief executive of ScottishPower Renewables welcomed McNeal’s words. He told The Sunday Telegraph: “The industry has been in danger of behaving like salivating subsidy junkies and trying to beat the government over the head on onshore wind. We need huge pragmatism from the industry to work with the government. I am confident that in one way, shape or form we can find a future for onshore wind.”
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Windfarms granted planning permission before the government changed its policy on subsidies will see onshore wind capacity double as part of ministers’ commitment to produce 15% of energy from renewable sources by 2020.
Of the 5,300 onshore wind turbines in operation across the UK, around 1,200 are in England and more than 2,800 in Scotland.
The cost to taxpayers has been more than £800m a year in subsidies, equivalent to an extra £10 a year on an annual domestic energy bill.
The former environment secretary Owen Paterson has called onshore wind “a failed medieval technology which during the coldest day of the year so far produced only 0.75% of the electricity load”.
The Scottish government is more supportive of onshore wind than Whitehall. Its target is to generate 100% of Scotland’s gross annual electricity consumption from renewable sources, including wave, wind and tidal, by 2020.
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The first minister, Nicola Sturgeon, has said that as 70% of planned windfarms are in Scotland, its renewables plans will be disproportionately affected. She called the UK government’s subsidy cuts “an extremely bad example to other countries” on tackling climate change.