Massive offshore wind farms will 'industralise' rural Yorkshire areas, says councillor
Land to the south-west of Beverley will be industrialised by a series of projects linked to huge renewables schemes, a councillor has warned.
Dale ward councillor Richard Meredith said the projects, which includes grid connections for vast offshore wind farms, were being considered in isolation, and their cumulative impact wasn’t being considered.
Next week East Riding’s planning committee will be discussing plans for a cable corridor from two offshore windfarms, known as Dogger Bank South, which will make landfall at Skipsea.
The £11bn project by German energy giant RWE could supply up to 3m households.
The cable will run underground to two massive converter stations near the tiny rural hamlet of Bentley, before connecting to the grid, via a new substation at Birkhill Wood.
Standing up to 27m tall, the stations will occupy a footprint of 200,000 square metres – around twice that of Wembley Stadium.
A council team says the impact on homes in Bentley and surrounding houses and farm and the adjoining scheduled monument, the WW2 Butt Farm anti-aircraft battery, would be “significant” but “impacts could be lessened through appropriate screen planting”.
However this is just one of the schemes planned for the area.
SSE has recently been consulting on its plans for the Dogger Bank D offshore wind farm, which will also connect into the new substation to be built by National Grid at Birkhill Wood.
Meanwhile, RWE is also developing the huge 320MW Peartree Hill solar farm, which will connect to the grid via the Creyke Beck substation. The 2.6GW Hornsea Project Four offshore wind farm, being developed by Ørsted, will also connect to the grid at Creyke Beck. The project which will make landfall north of Barmston was given the green light by the previous government.
Councillor Meredith said people could be in for a “nasty surprise”, adding: “My biggest concern is because the council is looking at each individual element, we could find ourselves completely pebble-dashed.
"There’s been consultations, meetings where people can talk to RWE or SSE, I’ve been to four or five, they’ve attended parish council meetings. But there’s so much going on. Most people are letting it wash over them – but all of a sudden there will be a very nasty surprise.
"It’s like five buses turning up, and there’s a traffic jam. In this instance we will be looking at a fairly industrial-looking countryside.”
Beverley Civic Society chair Richard Lidwell said: “If you drive down there now and look across to Bentley and Butt Farm, it’s a beautiful wooded area.
"It’s going to make the area south-west of Beverley fairly industrial-looking unless there’s an awful lot of screening. They should instigate strong measures to reduce the impact.”
RWE’s plans are currently in the “pre-examination” phase. A preliminary meeting began on October 22 but was adjourned following a request for further information from the “examining authority”, made up of five inspectors.
They will make their recommendations to Energy Secretary Ed Miliband, who will make the final decision. The council’s report will be considered as part of the “examination”.