How Net Zero targets are being frustrated by nimbyism - Yorkshire Post Letters

Yorkshire Post Letters correspondent Terry Riordan speaks on the Sunak Westminster Government's sluggish approach to tackling climate change and securing British renewable energy security.

Mr Riordan's article makes many relevant and informed points regarding Tory inability to meet their own Net Zero, carbon neutrality and renewable energy goals and targets.

However, what many seem to ignore - to be fair to the Government in London - is the huge influence of NIMBY Councillors and Local Areas who seem electorally and ideologically opposed to any form of new developments, be it new green housing to tackle the housing crisis, or renewable energy developments such as turbines, solar panels, or indeed battery farms, which are vital if we are to transition away from a fossil fuel, combustion engine powered economy and mode of transport.

As councillor Andy Brown clearly and eloquently states in the same issue, in many cases of development these days, local planning policy consistently fails to meet local demand. Greenwashed housing and infrastructure developments need only say the magical words ‘sustainable development’ and then any close scrutiny from Local Authority Councils' Planning Committees seemingly finishes at the snap of the fingers.

I pose the question to you. Why is there no mandate for new private development housing builds, or indeed any new buildings, to be constructed with built-in heat pumps, solar panels, or micro-wind turbines? For when the sun dun't shine, the wind shall blow.

Such mandates on new build housing coming with private companies pre-installing small renewable energy production would take the country in great strides towards helping the fight against ecological collapse, while helping to secure Yorkshire and England's energy independence from our addictive reliance on Russian gas or polluting foreign coal and oil from the likes of China, India or the Congo.

Climate change, energy security, and modern housing development are an interlinked three pronged challenge we all face.

Rishi Sunak's Government would do well to look at regulating new builds in local areas not just to meet local needs, (which are often missed or ignored) but to ensure that modern green energy production is at the forefront of new developments, for it shall create many well paid green engineering jobs for our youth, and help save the environment by reducing our desperate reliance on foreign energy and industry. This can only be good for Yorkshire and subsequently Britain.