Inconvenient truth about Cameron's 'green' Tories

Robert Lea
15 May 2009

"My ambition for the Conservative Party is to lead a new green revolution I think of a cleaner, greener world for our children to enjoy and inherit."

When David Cameron made his breakthrough clean energy speech three years ago this spring, it was a landmark as bold as a wind turbine the size of Big Ben. No Conservative leader had ever attempted to mix the political palette of Tory Blue and tree-hugger Green.

But while the energy policy landscape has moved on - nuclear energy is now seen as the main weapon with which to cut carbon emissions, and giant offshore wind farms have become logistically preferable to land-based installations - Cameron remains true to the vision he conjured up that day.

Cameron's Big Idea for renewables is "decentralised energy" - that local generators like small wind farms are part of the answer to the conundrum of the low carbon economy.

"Generated on a smaller local scale, [it would be] closer to, and could even be produced by, the communities and consumers it serves, and also has the benefit of delivering energy to consumers in a far more efficient method," he told voters.

Current Tory energy policy states as "smaller-scale, decentralised wind turbines become more feasible, landscape-environmental problems and objections from local communities can be reduced or eliminated. In the right locations, they can be carbon efficient, saving as much as one tonne of CO2 per year per home powered".

It is therefore an unfortunate fact that since that breakthrough speech, not one significant onshore wind farm has been consented to, let alone built, in the rolling Tory shires south of the Trent.

Every single proposal - and there have been dozens - has fallen foul of either a Conservative-led local council or the sitting Tory MP.

To borrow the phrase of American presidential candidate-turned-ecological campaigner Al Gore, it is has become David Cameron's inconvenient truth: on wind farms his party does not agree with him.

The sheer catalogue of opposition to local schemes appears to indicate that, second to claiming expenses on moats, tennis courts or chandeliers, the Tory MP's greatest preoccupation is to whip up antagonism to local wind farms.

Nimby - not in my backyard - does not cover it. This is the full-blown 21st-century dissent of the "banana" - build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything.

The track record of these off-message Tories, Cameron's bunch of bananas, is not edifying.

In Cambridgeshire, a plan to erect eight turbines to power 9000 homes at Linton has been blocked by Cameron's Shadow Minister of Agriculture Jim Paice, backed by neighbouring North Essex MP and Tory grandee Sir Alan Haselhurst.

Nearby, Cotton Farm's eight turbines to power 10,000 homes were blocked by Shadow Health Secretary and local MP Andrew Lansley with the aid of neighbouring Huntingdon MP Jonathan Djanogly, who said the turbines would be twice as tall as Ely Cathedral.

"Wind turbines can make a useful contribution to renewable energy, but they must be well-sited," argued Lansley. "The proposal at Cotton Farm would be highly visually intrusive. It would dominate rural and landscape views. It makes no sense to damage the environment in this part of Cambridgeshire."

Over the border in Northamptonshire, where npower wants to erect 12 turbines to power 13,500 homes at Nun Wood, Buckinghamshire MP Mark Lancaster, Cameron's Shadow Minister for International Development, backed opposition: "My gut reaction is to oppose it because it is going to be a blight on the north Bucks countryside. They are about 400 feet tall and they will absolutely dominate the landscape. I am all for alternative energy but I am not convinced it is the best thing for North Bucks."

In East Anglia, Norfolk MP Richard Bacon helped block a scheme to power 10,000 homes at Hempnall.

"Previously adapted wind power in East Anglia came from traditional windmills but those windmills were in scale with the landscape," he blustered. "These industrial-size structures are an alien presence. They are entirely inappropriate in such unspoilt and gentle countryside."

Self-proclaimed environmentalist and former Cabinet minister Tim Yeo helped derail a scheme to power 7000 west Suffolk homes.

"Without doubt this is a particularly beautiful part of the countryside and it would be very damaging to the whole environment if these turbines were introduced," said Yeo. "This is not a suitable place for a wind farm."

In North Essex, local MP Douglas Carswell damned a five turbine project near St Osyth, saying: "They are not nice eco-friendly sources of electricity, they are monster turbines."

A plan to build a wind farm on redundant land next to the former nuclear power station at Bradwell in the south of the county is in abeyance after local MP John Whittingdale argued his constituents would prefer a new nuclear plant to a wind farm. In the West Country, Bridgwater MP Ian Liddell-Grainger and Wells MP David Heathcoat-Amory suspected that the Liberal Democrat-led local Somerset council had ulterior motives.

"Wind power has its place but not if it means buggering up some of the most beautiful landscapes just to make money," said Liddell-Grainger. "My understanding is that the going rate in rent for sighting a turbine is £10,000 a year."

Heathcoat-Amory claimed: "It seems the county will skim off profit and the rest of us will pay higher electricity bills."

Cameron, who has famously not got around to erecting his own promised mini-wind turbine on the roof of his Notting Hill home, faces enough problems keeping the party in line over MPs expenses and on Europe in the upcoming elections.

Getting the party onside on green energy is proving even more difficult.

Ian Liddell- Grainger

'Buggering it up'

David Heathcoat- Amory

'Skimming profit'

Mark Lancaster

'Not convinced''

Andrew Lansley

'Visually intrusive''

Jim Paice

'Not suitable''

John Whittingdale

'Nuclear better'

Douglas Carswell

'Monster'

Tim Yeo

'Very damaging'

Richard Bacon

'Alien'

1. Somerset

2. North Bucks

3. Cambridgeshire

4. Cambridgeshire

6. South Essex

7. North Essex

5. West Suffolk

8. Norfolk