Infrastructure Planning (Onshore Wind and Solar Generation) Order 2025

Debate between Earl Russell and Lord Teverson

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.

Great British Energy Bill

Debate between Earl Russell and Lord Teverson

Committee stage
Wednesday 15th January 2025 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

I shall not prolong the conversation tonight but the noble Lord is, once again, absolutely right about national defence, radar and being able to see an incoming attack with missiles or whatever. The problem was that the Ministry of Defence did not man that area enough. Decisions were extremely slow. There was a rumour—of course, I have no proof of this —that it used to use its slowness and its objections to insist that developers helped it upgrade its military equipment. I do not know whether it was true—I am sure that it was not, of course—but that was the perception. The main problem was the slowness of response.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to my Amendment 118A, which covers wider considerations. Let me be clear: it is also a probing amendment, as are all the amendments in this interesting and diverse group. I thank the noble Lord, Lord Macpherson of Earl’s Court, for adding his support to my amendment, which is about ensuring that communities benefit directly from the renewable energy projects that Great British Energy undertakes. I put it forward to see whether that is possible and to ask, from the Government’s point of view, what barriers to that might exist.

My amendment would ensure that 5% of gross revenue from all Great British Energy

“renewable energy projects generating over one megawatt”,

both onshore and offshore, would

“be paid into community benefit funds”.

The idea for it came from the honourable Angus MacDonald MP’s experience with Scottish Government Good Practice Principles for Community Benefits from Onshore Renewable Energy Developments. This guidance promotes community benefits of a value equivalent to £5,000 per installed megawatt per annum, index-linked for the operational lifetime of projects.

My amendment requires that:

“Within six months of the day on which this Act is passed, the Secretary of State must prepare and lay before Parliament a report setting out proposals for ensuring that local communities benefit from renewable energy projects undertaken by Great British Energy. The report … must set out, but is not limited to, proposals for 5% of the gross revenue from all such renewable energy projects generating over one megawatt to be paid into community benefit funds”.


I will not go into the rest of the details; the amendment is before noble Lords. It simply puts into the Bill that local communities should directly benefit from renewable energy undertaken, and that there is a mechanism available for doing that. On the 5% figure, I am happy to have a conversation with the Minister if it is an issue. I note that Denmark’s Law on the Promotion of Renewable Energy 2008 had a 20% figure, in relation to which 5% is a lot lower.

To talk more about the spirit of the amendment, this is really about helping disadvantaged communities, particularly those that are hosting our renewable energy. A lot of them are in the highlands and in Scotland. They disproportionately suffer from poor infrastructure and poor public services, and a lot of them are living in fuel poverty. They are putting up with having their landscapes covered in turbines, dams, electricity transmission lines, substations and all the rest of it. I support community energy, as everybody knows—I have spoken to it in two other amendments and will not go into it here—but this is about more than that. This is not a nice-to-have; in my opinion, this is an essential part of the energy transition. It is about ensuring the continued long-term support for this journey that we are undertaking as a society.

Recent opinion polls on these matters are really strong. Where local communities benefit from the energy infrastructure, particularly the infrastructure that they host, their support for this transition is much stronger and more resilient. If this support falls away, that could be the end of the whole transition and of all this, so this is not just about being fair and supporting the communities that need it most and that host this stuff. It is also about making sure that these things go on beyond one Government and one term, that they are here, that we manage to take society with us on this journey, and that those who are hosting things that other bits of society need benefit from them.

Turning to the other amendments in this group, I signal my support for Amendment 118 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Bloomfield. I note that the Wildlife and Countryside Link put out a detailed briefing on that and why it needs to be there. I also support Amendments 114 and 115 in the name of my noble friend Lord Teverson. I will not go into too much detail on that. As he said, there is an Oral Question on this tomorrow. It is unfortunate that we have had more recent incidents, not just in the Baltic but off the coast of Taiwan. Obviously, the UK has a number of electricity interconnectors and gas pipelines —we had a conversation about gas in the House this week—and they will only ever increase. New contracts have been signed. We have about 7.7 gigawatts at the moment, and that will rise to 18 gigawatts by 2032, so this is a crucial part of our energy security and our journey to net zero.

I would ask the Minister one thing. We can have conversations about the other aspects later on, but I am worried about the Government going away, stepping up their appreciation of this risk and maybe recalculating some of their calculations around the security of supply as we transition to net zero in 2030 and beyond. Is there is a greater need to look at some of those things again? We will talk about the rest tomorrow.

If the Committee will excuse me, the noble Lord, Lord Macpherson of Earl’s Court, has left me a note. Does the Committee mind if I read that in support of my amendment?

These are his words: “My Lords, I would like to speak in support of Amendment 118A. I should first declare an interest as a director of two family-owned hydroelectric companies in Wester Ross. Having worked in the Treasury during the 1980s boom in North Sea revenues, I am all too conscious that Britain has a poor record in reinvesting the benefits of energy windfalls and an even worse record in passing on those benefits to communities directly affected by energy production. I think Shetland receives some money, but other places do not”.

“It is in the nature of renewable energy production that it tends to take place in remote areas. I am thinking in particular of the Highlands of Scotland, but the same applies to Cornwall, Devon, Wales and Cumbria. People living in these communities often have to live with negative aspects of renewable energy: towering windmills or hydroelectric schemes which change the natural environment and can particularly scar a hillside. Because of the remoteness, oil and gas and electricity connections cost more”.

“Successive Governments in Westminster and Edinburgh have supported the principle of requiring energy developers to support their local communities, and there have been some good examples of community investment. But practice is variable, and often contributions are set in cash terms and bear no relation to the subsequent success of renewable energy schemes. Great British Energy has a huge opportunity to lead by example in exercising best practice. By setting up community benefit as a fixed percentage of gross revenue, this amendment seeks to ensure communities benefit more fairly. A 5% contribution is relatively modest, as I understand it”—and he then goes on to make the Denmark point.

“Of course I hope that the noble Lord the Minister will agree to the amendment, but I have a feeling that he will argue that this amendment will cut across the operational independence of Great British Energy and that this Bill is the wrong vehicle for addressing community benefits. If that is the case, I would like to ask the Minister if he can go beyond fine words of general support for community benefits. Will he commit to setting out a clearer definition of what represents a reasonable and fair rate of community benefit for a given level of revenue for renewable energy projects?”.

Great British Energy Bill

Debate between Earl Russell and Lord Teverson

Committee stage
Tuesday 17th December 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I apologise. In my excitement to contribute in Committee, I forgot to apologise for not being able to come to previous sessions. I also forgot to declare that I am a director of Aldustria Ltd, a battery storage company, and that I chair the Cornwall & Isles of Scilly Local Nature Partnership, which is involved in biodiversity issues.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I will speak to my Amendment 50 and signal my support, and that of our Benches, for Amendments 46, 46A, 49 and 51A.

My Amendment 50 seeks to add a statement to the strategic priorities, including a specific priority for the advancement and production of clean energy from schemes owned, or part-owned, by community organisations. This amendment seeks simply to have community energy added to the strategic priorities for Great British Energy. I apologise for talking about community energy again, as my Amendments 11 and 15 were about the objects of the Great British Energy company; these amendments work alongside those, and, combined, we want to see community energy in the Bill, both in the objects of the company and in the strategic priorities.

Labour has looked to Europe for its inspiration—for want of a better word—for Great British Energy. In Europe, community energy is being embedded in local power networks at an ever-increasing level. Europe is doing that because it knows that it is good for energy security, continuity of supply and local communities and that it brings local benefits. Here at home, we have seen the end of the feed-in tariff, but since that time there has been very little development, with still only 0.5% of our electricity being generated from community-based energy schemes. Reports have indicated that there is a possibility for that to grow exponentially up to some possible 8 gigawatts of local community energy by working with local energy plans, provided that the investment and policy are put in place to make that happen.

I thank Power for People, which has helped me with these amendments and provided your Lordships with briefings. It believes that up to 2.2 million homes could be powered by community energy, that it could save some 2.5 million tonnes of carbon dioxide and that it could help to create some 30,000 jobs in the UK.

Community energy is good not just for us but for our communities. Without going through all the arguments I made the other day, our position is that there is no Great British Energy without a Great British community energy. Our vision is for an end-to-end community energy scheme, so that our local communities can contact one person and get an end-to-end system to help them to get the investment, planning and ideas to turn their wishes to help contribute and be part of this transition into reality.

The point is that the big players will not do this; they are not operating in this field. This simply will not happen if GB Energy does not take it on and make it part of its core strategic priorities—it just will not happen. There is no other realistic option for this. This is good for us and for our communities, and we want to see communities benefitting from the energy infra- structure that they host or run. I apologise, but there will be a third bite of the cherry, as my Amendment 118A, in group 14, argues specifically for this point.