Infrastructure Planning (Onshore Wind and Solar Generation) Order 2025

Earl Russell Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I pay tribute to the persistence of the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman, on this subject and to how she has carried this end of Parliament on a number of occasions.

I normally agree with the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, on an awful lot of things but I do not quite agree with her here. I spent most of my bank holiday break in an EV in Yorkshire, and I was delighted at how easy it was to recharge it. It was the first time for quite a while that my wife and I had been on a long journey in an EV. The difference in the charging network was absolutely amazing. I praise the previous Government’s EV charging policies as much as I praise the present Government for achieving that, but I recognise —from the Cornwall aspect—that there is a challenge here for really rural areas, and certainly when tourists come to our areas.

I wanted to contribute today to say that I very much welcome this SI and the move to go back properly to onshore wind. It is an important way in which our landowning and farming communities can diversify their income.

I turn to the limit on solar. On every solar farm I have visited in the past few years, I would ask the owners, “What is the energy capacity of this?” They would say, “It’s 49.5 megawatts”, because they do not want to trip over that barrier into the national planning scheme. So I welcome the fact that this SI will make that a lot easier.

However, the one question I would like to ask the Minister—this was raised by the Opposition Benches in the earlier debate on energy security—concerns warehouse roofs and commercial roofs. I am a great supporter of solar but, like me, many people ask, “Why are we not managing to have many more solar applications on existing commercial, industrial and car park roofs?” I recognise that there are often different owners—there is the landlord, and then there is the company that occupies under a lease—so the relationship between owners for commercial buildings is never easy. However, I say this to the Minister: it cannot be beyond the ability of the Government to find a mechanism to incentivise that to happen. It would get huge plaudits from all sides of political opinion if we managed to achieve that. It would also help with the understandable reservations that there sometimes are around the agricultural use of solar, by showing that the right things are happening in other areas too.

I would be interested to understand from the Minister when the planning regime—as we know, the Planning and Infrastructure Bill is in the other place at the moment —will become law, as it surely will. It may be amended in various ways as it passes through both Houses, but might it affect this matter in any way?

I very much welcome this SI and hope that we will see a rejuvenation of onshore wind. As I often say, from my own house, I can see—the last time I counted, at least—between 30 and 40 wind turbines. I live on a hill and, to me, they are part of a living countryside. There are right places to put them and there are wrong places to put them; we should leave it to local authorities to decide what those are.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak in favour of this order. I thank the Minister for outlining its purpose.

The Liberal Democrats have always championed renewable energy. For too long, this country has suffered from the failures of the previous Conservative Government to invest in clean power and to insulate our homes, contributing directly to the energy crisis and leaving householders and businesses facing soaring bills. The vast majority of people in this country want more action on climate change. That is why we welcome this instrument as another important step in supporting the deployment of onshore wind and solar, which are both crucial to achieving the Government’s mission for clean power by 2030.

We are particularly supportive of the lifting of the effective moratorium on onshore wind. This was a deeply short-sighted and irresponsible policy, introduced via the planning changes in 2015 and 2016, which created a de facto ban in England. This ban limited deployment and caused the pipeline of projects to shrink by over 90%, with less than 40 megawatts of onshore wind generated during this decade. The reintroduction of onshore wind projects of over 100 megawatts into the nationally significant infrastructure project regime is crucial. The order reverses those damaging policies and places onshore wind on the same footing as other generation technologies such as solar, offshore wind and nuclear power stations. This provides an appropriate route for large-scale projects and offers greater certainty to industry.

Similarly, we support the decision to raise the NSIP threshold for solar projects from 50 to 100 megawatts. This change is needed in part due to technological advances in solar panels and aims to ensure that applications are processed efficiently through the appropriate planning regime. The previous threshold incentivised developers, as we have heard, to cap their capacity below 50 megawatts to avoid triggering the NSIP process. Raising the threshold should incentivise projects to develop on a more optimal and efficient scale and to ensure that mid-sized projects access a more proportionate planning route via local planning authorities. What assessments have been made of local planning authorities’ capacity and funding requirements to take on this extra work? They must be adequately resourced and supported to handle the influx of potentially larger-scale solar projects.

While we support the ambitions to streamline planning for major projects, concerns remain. The NSIP regime involves decisions made by the Secretary of State, and some respondents to the consultation expressed concern that this process might overly centralise decision-making and bypass local authorities and communities. This is particularly pertinent when considering large projects that can have a significant impact on local landscapes and communities. It is vital that the Government strike an appropriate balance between building nationally important infrastructure, protecting our precious landscapes and ensuring that local communities have a meaningful say. This Government must do more to work in partnership with local communities and ensure that they benefit from the infrastructure that they host—more “working with” and a bit less “doing to”.

How will the Government ensure that local voices are genuinely heard and their concerns addressed in the NSIP examination period, particularly for onshore wind? Can the Minister provide more detail on timelines for these frameworks and assure us that they will ensure that the balance between deploying renewable energy, protecting nature, ensuring food security and considering where best to locate projects is effectively struck?

Finally, the decision to set the solar threshold at 100 megawatts aims to avoid artificial capping and incentivise optimal site sizing. The impact assessment mentions monitoring and evaluation plans, looking at whether projects are clustering below the new thresholds and whether planning timelines for projects have increased. Can the Minister confirm how the planned post-implementation review and ongoing monitoring will assess whether the 100-megawatt thresholds are achieving the desired efficiency and optimal site sizing? All these projects will require timely grid connections, and I encourage the Government to support agrivoltaics.

Other noble Lords spoke about the need for more solar on rooftops and in car parks; for example, France generates 5% of its electricity from car parks alone. The Government may want to look at an amendment to the Planning and Infrastructure Bill on that. I very much welcome signs from them that new homes will have solar panels installed. There are issues around the way that some of the warehouses have been designed; they have not been built to take the weight of solar panels.

These legislative changes are a necessary step, but successful implementation requires careful consideration of local impacts and ensuring that our planning system is robust and balanced and takes communities with it.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I apologise to the Minister for missing the first moments of his speech, but as somebody who was taken to a tribunal by those who do not believe in climate change for daring to suggest that we had in effect banned onshore wind, I feel very strongly that this is an ideal moment to say how important onshore wind is.

Near to where I live in Suffolk, in the town of Eye, which I used to represent in the old Eye division, there is some onshore wind. When it started, an awful lot of people opposed it; they thought it was going to be very ugly and did not like it. Now it has become iconic. Recently, I was pleased to see—this Committee’s chair, the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, will be interested in this—that an attractive ballet was put on using it as the background, showing a wholly different way in which people have accepted it.

I get very tired of people who are very much in favour of having electricity themselves but complain about its expense, which is the cost of gas, and then are opposed every time to having any further renewable electricity. We ought to be supporting this and seeking ways to introduce onshore wind, wherever that is suitable. There are places where it is not suitable; that is perfectly true, as the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, rightly said.

Onshore wind and offshore wind need to be linked to the national grid system, but I hope the Government will recognise that the best way to get support for that is always to find the most appropriate way and try to avoid unnecessary pylons—then you can honestly say to a community: “I’m afraid that here there is no alternative”. I hope that people will recognise that, if we spend a great deal more on the distribution of electricity, the only people who will pay for it are the customers. We have to get that balance right. I hope that the Government will look more closely at alternatives and be able to show why they choose pylons.

On what my noble friend Lady McIntosh said, I have to say that it is not acceptable. It is no good; we will have to take electricity from where we make it to where we use it. If people want electricity, that is what we have to do. Frankly, there is no connection whatever between this and what happened in Spain. The constant desire to write down what is so essential to us seems to me very sad.