Infrastructure Planning (Onshore Wind and Solar Generation) Order 2025

Lord Deben Excerpts

Tuesday 6th May 2025 Grand Committee

[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.

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

I think I am right in saying that the seat that my noble friend represented is now represented by a different party from ours. We need the electricity in the north—I cannot speak for Suffolk—and it would be much better to keep that source of energy close to where it is produced, rather than having pylons criss-crossing and destroying the countryside.

[Lord Deben (Con)]

I am quite sure that nobody takes electricity more distantly than they need to if it is going to be used locally. In my constituency—which was indeed one of the seats lost at the last election—the issue is not a question of pylons. The issues were very different and not really to do with this at all. I come back to the point that it is not sensible constantly to refer to things that are not connected with this. I repeat that there is no connection between the outages in Portugal and Spain and the issue before us.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Deben (Con)]

Would my noble friend give way so I can ask him about the phrase “arbitrary targets”? The targets are actually the result of the detailed propositions of the Climate Change Committee; they are not arbitrary in any way. He may disagree with the targets, but “arbitrary” means that they have just been picked out of the air. That is not so.

[Lord Offord of Garvel (Con)]

I thank the noble Lord for his intervention. However, we are now dealing with a moving landscape and we have an accelerated programme on decarbonisation, which goes beyond what was set previously with the target for 2030. This is critical. This road map is critical to that, and so I am right to question whether these targets are real. They are moving around; they seem to be moving on an arbitrary and accelerated basis. I think it is relevant to ask the question about how these targets are moving, as the order as it stands risks damaging both the democratic process and the long-term success of our energy future.