The UK’s next government must kickstart development of England’s onshore renewables potential or put decarbonisation targets at risk. The Labour party, the heir apparent, has promised to do just that.

Speaking at the Global Offshore Wind conference in Manchester, shadow energy secretary Ed Miliband reiterated a previous pledge to lift the de-facto ban on onshore wind development if Labour prevails at the polls.

A Labour government would reportedly issue a written ministerial statement removing a requirement in the national planning policy framework for community concerns to be “appropriately addressed”. This stipulation is often used by a vocal minority to block onshore wind projects.

The promise was warmly welcomed by the wind industry. RenewableUK said doubling onshore wind installed capacity to 30 GW this decade would “boost the economy by £45bn and create 27,000 jobs”.

Onshore renewable energy development in England promises great potential. Recent research from Friends of the Earth (FOE) and Exeter University has shown England could produce 13 times more renewable energy than it does now. The country can achieve this while using less than 3% of its land.

“Unleashing the UK’s immense potential to generate cheap, clean homegrown renewables is essential to bring down our energy bills for good and meeting the UK’s vital international target to reduce carbon emissions by two thirds by 2030,” said Tony Bosworth, climate campaigner at Friends of the Earth (FoE), at the report’s launch.

Unrealised potential

The UK must roughly double its renewable power capacity over the next six years. This will catalyse the green transition in areas such as EVs and clean heating, and replace fossil fuels. It will be crucial to realise the country’s international climate target of cutting emissions by 68% by 2030.

“The current target to reach a decarbonised power system is 2035,” said Frankie Mayo, senior UK energy & climate analyst at energy think tank Ember. “But England is way behind Wales and Scotland in terms of yearly installations of, particularly, onshore wind.” Labour has said it will decarbonise power by 2030.

The researchers at FoE and Exeter University’s Environmental Intelligence Centre identified 219,800 hectares of land for new onshore wind developments. They also found 295,000 hectares with potential for new solar sites. Some of this can be utilised for both – all while protecting nature and important landscapes.

The analysis excluded – among other things – national parks and areas of outstanding natural beauty (AONBs), higher grade agricultural land, small developments and heritage sites. It found enough viable land to generate 130,421 GWh of solar power and 95,542 GWh of onshore wind. This is far in excess of their current combined generation of 17,063 GWh from these sources.

If all of this potential was realised, it would produce 2.5 times the current electricity consumption of all English households. Not all this would be needed, given progress in offshore wind and rooftop solar.

Eyes on price

Tapping these onshore renewables would also boost energy independence, end reliance on volatile gas markets and lower electricity bills.

The government reports that an onshore wind project, in 2025, would deliver electricity at a cost of £38 per MWh. This compares favourably to the £44 per MWh for offshore wind, and is significantly lower than £114 per MWh for new gas plant.

The UK entered the 2022 energy crisis with a ‘gap’ in onshore wind capacity, the Resolution Foundation has said. The country turned to gas to cover the gap, resulting in an extra £5bn in electricity costs across the economy.

Those on the lowest incomes were hit particularly hard. They spent an extra 0.6% of their annual incomes on higher-priced electricity from gas, compared to 0.1% for the richest.

Clean exports

Realising additional renewables could also see the UK export clean electricity to other countries. The sites identified by the researchers could generate 213 GW of renewable energy by 2035. This meets even the higher estimates for renewable energy additions required to decarbonise the sector, which total around 170.5 GW.

“The UK is blessed [with renewable energy resources],” said Mike Childs, FOE’s head of science, policy & research. “We could become a very significant energy exporter and help our neighbours decarbonise their economies.”

As well as existing interconnections with France, the Netherlands and Ireland, construction recently started on a 700 km power cable linking the UK’s electricity network with Germany. This should be operational by 2028.

Expanding onshore renewables capacity would also be a jobs boon for England.

“We’re talking about a much bigger electricity grid than today,” says Childs. “We’re seeing a burgeoning growth of wind industry in old shipbuilding and coal hubs in the North-East and Scotland. We’ve got the scope to plan this transition and make it work for people as well as the planet.”

According to a recent report by the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit, jobs in the net-zero economy are highly productive. They generate £114,300 in economic activity and are better paid by almost £10,000 – the average net-zero salary being £44,600 compared to the £35,400 UK average.

“The North Sea oil and gas transition is going to happen whatever we do,” adds Mayo. “The other benefits of renewables is that they are less concentrated, geographically, so economic development can be spread across the country.”

*Onshore wind turbines. Source: National Grid*

Why the lag?

There are various reasons why onshore renewables have not developed in England as they should. Chief amongst them is the de-facto ban on onshore wind developments.

“If you get any local objection to the development – which is most of the time – then you can’t get planning permission for it,” explained Mayo.

There also tends to be considerably less local opposition to offshore wind than onshore renewables. This has led some politicians to “push for offshore and ignore the rest,” said Childs.

Furthermore, the Environmental Audit Committee (EAC) recently published a report on the electrification of Britain. MPs said there was enough power capacity in the pipeline “to meet the current government’s target of a clean power system by 2035”. However, “progress was being hampered by grid capacity and lengthy planning delays”.

Political pressure

Indeed, Childs pointed to plans for onshore renewable development in Conservative constituencies. There has been local opposition to onshore solar and wind farms both on aesthetic grounds and the notion that there is a land-use conflict with agricultural production. Neither argument, according to Childs, stands up to scrutiny.

“We’re talking about a tiny amount of agricultural land in proportion to what we really need,” he said. “Unfortunately, the current government has used the issue as a political football in its nasty culture-wars campaign. The relatively few dissenting local voices to developments have had a disproportionate sway.”

Recent polling found that 58% of voters in Britain’s most rural seats support new onshore wind in their area. Meanwhile, 64% back solar farms.

“There’s a lot of land that isn’t high-quality farmland that can bring benefits to landowners, local communities and the grid,” added Mayo. “About a third of farmers already have some form of energy generation on their land, so there’s a high level of interest. Many have already seen the benefits of installing renewables.”

Grid grind

However, one very real delay to the industry’s development is the length of time a new solar or wind farm currently takes to connect to the national electricity grid. It currently takes 12–14 years to build new electricity transmission, from identification of need to commissioning, found a recent report by the Electricity Networks Commissioner Nick Winser.

Large wind farms, on the other hand, are constructed in half this time. The congestion problem is only growing at the moment, with National Grid reporting the transmission connection queue was more than 700 GW.

There is a queueing system for the grid which means poor-quality projects are blocking better ones from connecting. There is a price to leaving the queue so there are even some ghost projects creating further delays.

“They’re trying to reform the system to dramatically reduce the waiting time, but the reality is we haven’t sufficiently invested in the grid over the last 10-15 years,” said Childs.

The delivery time for new strategic transmission lines could be reduced to around seven years, according to Winser’s report. He laid out 18 recommendations – including streamlining planning, expediting regulatory approval, fostering greater community buy-in and filling the engineering skills gap – to achieve that ambition.

In fact, National Grid recently announced plans to invest more than £30bn in Britain’s electricity network – earmarked for new pylons and other offshore and onshore transmission systems – over the next five years. However, it must do more.

Powering up

Looking ahead, there are policies the UK’s new government could implement to kickstart England’s lagging onshore renewables deployment.

Chief amongst them, according to the FoE/Exeter report, is removing the de-facto ban on onshore wind. Also, the statutory pre-application requirement  for more than two turbines, with a hub height of over 15 metres, should be scrapped. Operators should use best practice community engagement principles instead.

Local authorities in England should identify suitable areas for renewable energy in their Local Area Energy Plan. The government should also publish a map of pre-assessed areas for wind and solar, where applications would benefit from a presumption in favour of development.

National Policy Statements, EN-1 and EN-3, should also be amended so that onshore wind projects over 50 MW are considered within the Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects (NSIP) regime. Further, the current need for “compelling evidence” for solar farm proposals should be relaxed.

Developing a grid for the 21st century must also become a top infrastructure priority. This would include requiring privatised network operators to publish much more data on current and future grid capacity.

“They must make it easier to exit the grid queue for developers,” said Mayo. “There’s also National Grid’s ‘First Ready, First Connect’ proposal to allow projects to connect to the grid based on when they are ready rather than in order of when they joined the queue.”

Local benefits

All renewable developments should also be required to deliver biodiversity benefits greater than the 10% statutory minimum for Town and Country Planning Act applications. And, finally, communities should be properly engaged and benefit from projects.

There are different models of community benefit. These can include community ownership, opportunities to buy into the project, as used by Ripple Energy, or residents benefiting from reduced energy costs.

“We need to reduce emissions quickly if we’re going to hit our 2030 target,” said Childs. “Of course, we need to be developing the technologies of the future; but not at the expense of rolling out what’s available now, which is wind and solar. It’s not an either/or, though – we need to make the whole cake bigger.”

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