Wind power: Local difficulty

Editorial
The Guardian, Thursday 30 July 2009

Many a radical hankers after a red-green alliance, but few ever expected one would flash into life on the Isle of Wight. The occupation of a factory set for closure in a conservative corner of England is interesting in itself, but is made even more so by the support being lent by environmentalists who are appalled because the plant in question, Vestas in Newport, is Britain's only major manufacturer of wind turbines. Two dozen determined workers have installed themselves there for nearly a fortnight, staying even after dismissal notices were delivered along with their meagre rations of food. And after the company botched its paperwork in court yesterday, the protestors will avoid eviction right through the weekend. That will give time for ticket-holders for the cancelled Big Green Gathering to make their way over the Solent for what they are branding a "Vestival", a spontaneous show of support.
Although Vestas has not moved to sell the plant, the firm's mind seems settled. The loss of livelihood for 650 employees amid a recession is a miserable prospect, made all the more galling when they are engaged in making something which – as the government's bold plans spell out – the country desperately needs. In the week when the business secretary, Peter Mandelson, has found £150m in new state support for manufacturing, Vestas might seem an obvious candidate for help from the newly proactive industrial policy. Most of the money went towards greening Rolls-Royce, but it might have been better to support genuinely environmental industries than to subsidise the partial cleansing of grubby aerospace. The Vestas story, however, is a complex one – and it is not really about shortage of money.
The firm's global sales and profits have risen, and it has not even asked for a bailout. The Newport plant makes turbines for the American market and the immediate trigger for closure is the transfer of this work to Vestas's expanding US operation. But that still leaves a mystery as to why the company is not, as it had planned, converting its Isle of Wight operation to serve the UK market. After all, this month's Low Carbon Transition Plan committed to 10,000 new turbines by 2020, so demand should be about to balloon. There are grumbles that Vestas charges too much to win UK contracts, but with the prospect of expansion, the firm should have very chance to make itself more competitive. Everything points to the company harbouring grave doubts about whether the orders for thousands of new turbines are really going to materialise.
At one level that seems peculiar, as both the main parties at Westminster are firmly committed to expanding renewables rapidly. Dig deeper to the local level, however, and the picture changes. We reported yesterday on objections being lodged in Shetland to the largest windfarm in Europe, and Greenpeace figures this week show that local councils are refusing permission for windfarms more often than they are giving them the green light, particularly in Conservative districts. A government scheme to overhaul the planning rules is supposed to make it easier to override local objections, but – while in firm agreement with the direction of travel – the Tory frontbench objects to some of the detail, which it regards as undemocratic. And until further detailed regulations emerge, it is unclear to potential investors how far either party will face down the inevitable objections from local people who resent the change that wind farms bring to familiar landscapes.
Not every windfarm should be licensed, but the great bulk of them will need to be. In a country that is serious about tackling climate change, raising objections might need to become something that carries a certain social stigma, as the climate secretary, Ed Miliband, has suggested. Reverence for local landscapes is natural, but it needs to be balanced by the need to find sustainable forms of energy.