Climate change - A chance to reconsider priorities

The confirmation that the Midlands wind farm project, involving anything up to 2,300 turbines, will not go ahead was inevitable once the British government lost faith in the capacity of wind to meet a significant proportion of Britain’s energy needs.

The Conservative-led coalition also concluded wind farms would have an unacceptable impact on host communities and refocused its ambitions on nuclear energy and North Sea reserves. Grant Shapps, the Conservative chairman, said Tories want to focus on offshore wind and they are completely opposed to onshore turbines “all over the place”. That commendable reservation did not extend to the Irish midlands, however.

It is unfortunate that this country’s first experience of renewable energy proposals on such a grand scale would have had a huge social impact, an impact unacceptable to those in Britain who were to buy the energy flowing from the project. That the deal has fallen though affords us and opportunity to consider if we need stronger safeguards for communities expected to host such projects as they are inevitable. The hierarchy of rights — host community, investors, landowners, benefactors, and energy companies — may need to be reordered too.