NEWS AND COMMENT: In the UK, people living near energy projects such as wind farms will be offered discounts on electricity bills of up to £10,000 in order to make the project more acceptable to local residents and thereby prevent opposition. This is a measure by the UK government to drive through environmentally friendly energy projects by increasing approval for onshore wind farms and pylons and substations. It’s an attempt to speed up efforts to curb global warming, as I understand it.
Government ministers Claire Coutino and the Chancellor, Jeremy Hunt, are in the process of negotiating how the payments will be made.
The current thinking is that households will possibly get discounts up to £10,000 on bills payable over 10 years in £1000 annual chunks.
And if a family live further away from the windfarm, smaller discounts may be offered.
These reforms will be announced in the autumn statement and they are described as being “the most eye-catching” by The Sunday Times today (the source of this post – thankyou).
The government wants to take steps to help end delays to grid connection.
The projects in all will be worth about £200 billion creating around 220,000 jobs.
These projects will take place over the next 15 years. There’s a five-point plan to be introduced “to remove stalled projects from the queue and reform the process for new connections”.
Climate change contributes to species’ extinctions
This is important in terms of the animal-human relationship because climate change is critical to that relationship. It goes without saying that humans manage the planet and they are doing a rather poor job of it.
Climate change is having a very damaging effect on wildlife in many ways and therefore steps to speed up infrastructure to curb global warming is very welcome to conservationists.
I would expect this discount scheme to be very welcome by many people. The truth is though if you live near a windfarm, it is disruptive. It not only spoils the view and therefore the amenity of the area in which you live but also there’s noise from the turbines which can affect animals on the ground grazing under wind farms.
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