We must embrace benefits of our onshore wind farms

Upgrading existing older turbines can more than double the energy output for local communities

In the current climate, timing and speed is of the essence. We need to prioritise what we can do quickly’

We’re in the middle of the worst energy crisis this country has seen in decades. Energy companies and the Government should do all they can to cushion the impact on consumers and get us out of it as quickly as possible.

This is a fossil fuel crisis – so to fix it, we need to quickly bring more home-grown, cheap, green energy onto the grid and into people’s homes. Only by weaning ourselves off gas imports can we bring energy bills down again and increase our energy independence.

The reality is that renewables are already the cheapest form of energy. So we need more wind and solar farms where communities want them. But we also need to make the most of the renewables that we already have.

Today, onshore wind is extremely popular amongst the vast majority of the British public. A survey by the Business Department found that eight in 10 people in the UK support onshore wind.

Our own polling shows nine in 10 people support onshore wind even in their own postcode area if it means cheaper energy.

The good news is we can increase the share of renewable energy quickly.

A new onshore wind turbine can be built within months. But because of planning and the time it takes to connect to the grid, historically it has taken seven years on average.

In fact, right now in England it’s extremely difficult to build new onshore wind turbines at all.

In the current climate, timing and speed is of the essence. We need to prioritise what we can do quickly.

This is where repowering older onshore wind turbines comes into the mix.

Onshore wind should always be led by community demand. That’s why we’re focusing on where people want it.

We’ve been blown away by the positive response to local wind power. More than 8,000 people and communities registered their interest in us bringing an onshore wind turbine to their community alongside cheaper energy. This interest has been highest across the North East, North West and the Midlands.

To meet this strong demand, we developed a digital matchmaking platform which we call ‘Winder’ (Tinder for wind). This connects communities that want onshore wind with landowners who would like to host it.

By overlaying this with data on wind speeds, environmental impact and grid capacity, we can identify the ideal spots to build wind power quickly – all driven by the people and for the people.

But while we work to reform the system to build more renewables quickly, we also need to make better use of the wind turbines we have available today.

Older onshore wind turbines have been a part of communities for years and are in designated areas with good wind yield.

The process of optimising or replacing them is much quicker than building new turbines.

At the moment, repowering is treated differently by the planning system compared with developing turbines from scratch. And we’re working really closely with planning authorities and local communities to optimise areas that have already been used for onshore wind. It’s clear that we’re pushing on an open door.

The UK is currently sitting on a fleet of about 9,000 onshore wind turbines. And onshore wind is not a new technology – far from it. It is tried-andtested, decades old, and has never been cheaper. The price of onshore wind has plummeted to record lows. Today it costs less than a third of what it did a decade ago.

The UK’S first onshore wind turbines were built early in the 1990s. Yet onshore wind technology has come along leaps and bounds over the years. It’s an absolute no-brainer to look at these existing older onshore turbines, and see how we can upgrade some of them to generate even more local power.

In many cases, a small wind turbine which powers about 400 homes can be repowered to generate two to three times more energy and power up to 1,200 homes. The scale is massive when we look at lots of these small wind turbines all in one go.

It will mean providing cheap energy to hundreds of thousands of homes – and where communities want it.

Through our partnership with turbine manufacturer EWT, we’ll have speedy access to tech-enabled wind turbines that will continue to power communities for years to come. There’s even potential to bring some of these wind turbines onto our world-first Fan Club style model, providing cheaper energy to customers living nearby when the wind is blowing.

We’re living in tumultuous and uncertain times. But one thing is certain: we need more cheap energy. Energy independence will come from a mix of sources. This will include offshore wind farms harnessing wind at sea, to small local onshore wind turbines, solar and more.

Within this context, accelerating what we can do quickly and cheaply is the obvious choice. Nobody has ever considered taking a targeted approach that looks at repowering Britain’s older wind turbines at scale.

We can’t sit back and bide our time. The need to generate more homegrown, cheap energy to help drive down energy bills is too urgent.

It is time to unleash Britain’s untapped repowering opportunity to help boost our energy security just when the country needs it most.