A recent Daily Post article paints the picture of how a combined 500MW in energy output of solar panels will cover 3,700 acres of farmland on Ynys Môn (Anglesey). That’s an area equivalent to the size of Wrexham.
Those two solar farms could generate well over £1bn in revenue over their lifetime. At an estimated sales value of £100/MWh, equating to revenues of around £50mn annually, multiplied by 40 years, that would be £2bn, minus building and operational costs. The profits will go to their owners BP Lightsource and Enso Energy, which are not based on Ynys Môn, nor anywhere else in Wales. There is after all a magic money tree, and it’s in but not for Wales.
Where decisions are made
The nature of the financial deals that deliver such colossal revenues is revealed by this existing giant 75MW solar farm in Monmouthshire. It’s owned by an investment firm in Mayfair.
The deals involve accounting practices and certifications that change hands to deliver corporate climate credibility. But, in the real physical world, they do not match the supply of a solar farm in Wales with that of an energy user in South East England.
Let’s be blunt. These solar farms will not save the planet. They will help meet corporate goals, and the Climate Change Committee’s net zero targets, which are used to justify ever-increasing ‘green’ projects based in Wales. This leads to increased extraction of Welsh resources and the related revenue, yet with few direct benefits for Wales and its people.
The decision on the massive BP Lightsource solar farm rests with Ed Miliband and the UK Government. The decision on the not-quite-so-massive Enso Energy project rests with Cardiff Bay.
But in both cases, the planning policies of the Welsh Government have opened the floodgates for this new chapter in the exploitation of Wales’s natural resources. Climate change is costing the earth. Claiming to fix it is costing Wales.
Future Wales
Future Wales 2040 is a little-known national plan. Its designation of areas of Wales as favourable for large-scale renewable development is at the top of the pile. Developers are laughing all the way to the bank. Future Wales will be out of date by 8:40 this evening, let alone 2040. It needs a pause and an overhaul that puts Wales’s future first.
By 2040, if these solar farms get the go-ahead, there will be no rotation of food crops on some of Wales’s most productive land. But the developers will be rolling in it for decades, or might sell their assets for a large sum at the outset. Meanwhile, Ynys Môn – which hosts some of Wales’ and the world’s most important monuments – will also play host to the monumental folly of 21st century ‘net zero’ policies, planning, and targets for the UK as a whole. Rinse and repeat for many parts of Wales.
Pensioners are having their winter fuel payments cut, and there’s still a two-child benefits cap. Energy bills remain high while energy profits mount for the already wealthy. And public services and their finances are on their knees – the very public service machinery that helps to facilitate the money-making renewable energy developments.
For true and more equitable decarbonisation, we need much smarter, more resilient, Made in Wales solutions – including appropriate solar and wind – that do not extract vast energy wealth via a big electricity grid.
Off the grid
The grid is one we pay increasingly towards from our energy bills, and as fuel poverty spirals. A grid that is susceptible to extreme weather. Such weather is likely to become more common. Yet our weak attempts to combat climate change are used as justification to expand the grid in the first place. Piling pylon problem upon problem, and creating the prospect of severe power cuts.
There is an alternative to this Thatcherite, neo-liberal, shareholder-driven pursuit of profit from Wales’s energy wealth. An alternative that cuts the flow of windblown cash to shareholders on the boards of companies throughout the value chain – developers, grid, suppliers, and corporate end-users – at Wales’s expense.
The answer is to decentralise energy and power, deploying resilient clean tech that serves Wales’s needs first and foremost. It does require a total energy reboot for Wales. But it is a path to energy independence for our country. Or we could sit back and watch our continued decline while energy profits soar in the City of London.
