The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Alok Sharma, has rejected a Development Consent Order application submitted by Vattenfall to extend the Thanet Offshore Wind Farm.
The decision, which had been due yesterday (June 1) has now been announced.
The Planning Inspectorate (PINS) accepted the proposed project for examination in 2018 following 18-months of consultation with residents and businesses by Vattenfall.
The Examining Authority issued a Recommendation Report to the Secretary of State on September 11, 2019. This report recommended that the Secretary of State should withhold consent for the project.
In the Vattenfall application the Swedish energy group proposed to deploy up to 34 wind turbines by 2023 in a development area close to the existing wind farm, 8km off Foreness Point. The scheme would have had a capacity of up to 340MW and would be capable of supplying renewable electricity annually to the equivalent of approximately 282,000 UK homes.
The turbines would have been up to 250 metres tall.
The firm said if Thanet Extension joined its Kent cluster of offshore wind farms it would allow Vattenfall to expand the existing workforce of 75 people currently working from the Ramsgate operations and maintenance base.
In the decision letter it states: “The Secretary of State, in deciding this application in accordance with section
104(3) of the Planning Act 2008 and having carefully considered the responses to his consultation on marine navigation, shipping and ports infrastructure issues, agrees with the recommendation of the ExA that approving this application would not be in accordance with EN-3 policies relevant to shipping, navigation and ports because the
proposed development does not reduce the increased navigational risk to ALARP.
“The Secretary of State has therefore decided to accept the ExA’s recommendation not to make the Order granting development consent. In light of his decision not to grant development consent for the reasons set out above, the Secretary of State notes that there were various other issues considered during the examination of the Application but does not consider it necessary to give these matters further consideration in the context of this decision.”
Danielle Lane, UK Country Manager for Vattenfall, said:“Naturally we’re very disappointed by this decision and will consider how we proceed from here.
“We continue to believe that Thanet Extension would be an important development for the local area, for UK energy security, and for the drive to reduce emissions.”
It’s a good sign for Manston, all the other DCOs are getting approved and the failure rate is so low…. ah.. oh… 🙁
Boris still wants to build his island so he don’t want too many windmills in the way.
Manston Airport is on plan.
They must have wanted too much money?
Ann and Robster – your comments are not just unpleasantly cynical but absurd.
If anything is dodgy, it’s the Manston Airport application.
And yet we never heard a peep from the pro Manston supporters of the employment opportunities that would have arisen from this DCO.
Is it selective attention as to which local job regeneration is supported?
Seems that way to me. This industry would have not wrecked our environment or quality of life or our tourism industry.
Unlike the monstrous Manston DCO still lumbering around our heads like a dying haddock flailing around in a saucepan of incompetence.
It sounds like a bit of a stitch up. It’s inconceivable (I think) that an international organisation such ad Vattenfall, with years of experience of building off-shore windfarms, should make what appears to be a major and elementary error.
Love your allegories, Emmeline!
Reducing Emissions?
A new documentary, “Planet of the Humans”, released free to the public on YouTube to mark the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day, reveals that industrial wind farms, solar farms, biomass, and biofuels are ALL wrecking natural environments.
ALL so-called ‘Green energy’ schemes are in fact INCREASING CO2 emissions, INCREASING the use of fossil fuels and vastly INCREASING the mining, processing and consumption of the Earth’s dwindling raw materials.
“Everywhere I encountered green energy, it wasn’t green energy”
Planet of the Humans Michael Moore
Having just read the Wikipedia article about “Planet of the Humans”, it is obvious that this film is flawed in many ways and should be looked at with scepticism.
Mike Shellenberger demolishes the film’s critics here —
Why?
A fascinating film.
But not science.
Bring on solar and wind energy. Save the planet.
“Several have signed a letter urging the removal of what they called a “shockingly misleading and absurd” documentary. Climate scientist Michael Mann said the filmmakers “have done a grave disservice to us and the planet” with distortions, half-truths and lies.”
“Renewable energy” is a misnomer. Wind and solar machines and batteries are built from non-renewable materials. And they wear out. Old equipment must be decommissioned, generating millions of tons of waste.
For example:
The International Renewable Energy Agency calculates that solar goals for 2050 consistent with the Paris Accords will result in old-panel disposal constituting more than double the tonnage of all today’s global plastic waste!
Since when did the industrial scale slaughter of Birds and Bats, by the million, become ‘clean green’ energy?
Every year in Spain alone — according to research by the conservation group SEO/Birdlife — between 6 and 18 million, yes million, birds and bats are killed by wind farms. They kill roughly twice as many bats as birds.
Spain – 330 Birds per turbine per year
Germany – 309 Birds per turbine per year
Sweden – 895 Birds per turbine per year
When will the wind industry be forced to reveal the appalling death toll?
And before the absurd is mentioned, I’ve never seen a gannet, fulmar or kittiwake killed by a cat, car windscreen, or kitchen window!
Wind turbines kill (globally) up to 350,000 birds yearly.
Cats kill (just in the UK) up to 27 million birds yearly.
Wind Energy’s War on Nature
“For decades the wind industry has put out a steady stream of grossly misleading information about its wildlife impact”
“Wind energy has emerged as one of the greatest threats to endangered bird and bat species, as well as insect populations, around the world”
“The German wind insect death toll is an astonishing one-third of the total annual insect migration in southern England” —
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/06/26/why-wind-turbines-threaten-endangered-species-with-extinction/#6a721bea64b4
That’s why it’s free and against natural resources…
Presumably RSP’s DCO application will be rejected for at least one similar reason- being in the wrong place.
Reducing emissions?
A new observational analysis using data from 10 European Union countries, published in May 2018, affirms the devastating conclusion that wind power installation “Amplifies the growth of fossil fuels”, and “Preserves Fossil Fuel Dependency” because for every 1% increase in the installed capacity of wind power, a quarter as much again is permanently required as back up!
Shellenberger is a supporter of nuclear power stations.
The Only ‘Green New Deals’ That have ever worked were done with Nuclear, NOT renewables.
The two poster children for renewables — California and Germany — have become models of how NOT to deal with climate change.
Germany spent 580,000,000,000 dollars on renewables and its emissions have been flat for a decade. And all of that unreliable solar and wind has made Germany’s electricity the most expensive in Europe.
Emissions in California rose after it closed one nuclear plant and will rise again if closes another. To the extent its emissions declined it was from the replacement of electricity from coal with electricity from cheaper and cleaner natural gas. Nuclear power is the only truly scalable, repeat scalable, reliable, low-carbon energy source proven capable of eliminating carbon emissions from the power sector.
Bottom line? Had California and Germany spent on New nuclear what they instead spent on renewables, both places would already have 100% clean power —
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelshellenberger/2019/02/08/the-only-green-new-deals-that-have-ever-worked-were-done-with-nuclear-not-renewables/#3e37b8ef7f61
Ah. Nuclear power.
The only slightly small problem: what to do with the appallingly poisonous spent fuel and fuel rods. No one knows what to do with them. They are stockpiled in ponds here and there round the world, mostly here, where they will remain toxic for 10s to 100s of thousands of years.
No thanks.
Waste?
The Big Cover Up: Wind Industry Burying Millions of Toxic Turbine Blades In Landfills —
https://stopthesethings.com/?s=blades
I think George H. is probably only reading things he knows he will agree with. They seem to be mostly American things.
I think GeorgeH is actually Michael Moore.
“BIOFUELS, BIOMASS and WINDFARMS are destroying wildlife habitats at great speed, yet they do not produce any environmental benefits at all. They are remedies that are worse than the illness and should be abandoned immediately.
If the planet is at risk, it is from the corrupt alliance of “green” charlatans, subsidy-sucking speculators, and politicians. Together, they have created a monster which is causing more devastation worldwide than there has been in 5,000 years of civilisation.”
The World Council for Nature
Thank goodness that long term planning about energy production lies in the hands of thoughtful people who have regard to the science, rather than nutters who really should get their tinfoil helmets adjusted.
Kathy did IoT News check Vattenfall position re cables crossing former landfill which KCC have scheduled for contamination testing. As you know KCC hope to include further tests for polychlorinated bi phenyls. Tests in 1992 found these chemicals. As you know this toxic burials history also applies to Westwood Cross. Something to cogitate about at the Mindfulness Area.
I have no idea why some are so against wind and solar. Nuclear Power has never really delivered cheap safe energy and the waste problem defies an adequate solution, at least here in the UK.
Turbine blades are made of GRP, Aluminium or Carbon fibre. Grp can be recycled as can aluminium. Carbon fibre is a problem, but it is a matter of creating a facility to process it. Airbus and the Boeing Dreamliner both use carbon fibre, so there is another problem, which a process facility for carbon fibre will solve. Dungeness A is still being dismantled years after it stopped generating and B will be joining it soon and we will paying for them in our bills, far into the future.
As always the USA buries them, but that is their way.
Solar and wind are getting cheaper, Nuclear remains expensive to build and operate and fossil fuels pollute constantly.
I would have thought that all these conspiracy theorists would like an energy system that allowed them to go off grid?
Cheap?
If Wind & Solar Are So Cheap, Why Are Germans Paying World’s Highest Power Prices?
The world’s most extortionate energy prices and why —
https://stopthesethings.com/2020/02/14/if-wind-solar-are-so-cheap-why-are-germans-paying-worlds-highest-power-prices/
Why doesn’t the government bring in a law saying that every new building must have solar panels? Currently, large amounts of countryside are being, or are going to be, turned into solar “farms”. Not only that, but this government has cut grants for solar panels.
Wind and solar are wealth and ecology destroying solutions to a non-existent problem.
Zero benefits – only costs.