Natural England - National Parks and Renewable Energy
National Parks and Renewable Energy
24 July 2009
Natural England wishes to correct the article in today’s Daily Telegraph “Build wind farms in National Parks, says Natural England chief” which is a misrepresentation of Natural England’s position.
We are making no call for wind farms to be built in National Parks and it is hard to envisage the circumstances in which large scale wind developments could be accepted in protected areas owing to the landscape and environmental impacts that they would be likely to have.
The impacts of renewable energy infrastructure projects are different from project to project and location to location and they need to be assessed accordingly. We support the small scale initiatives that various National Parks have already allowed and will continue to support small scale renewable initiatives where these are shown to have minimal impacts on the environment and local landscapes. In principle, larger scale initiatives could be considered but their impacts would have to be evaluated against very stringent criteria. We are not calling for them to built.
We believe National Parks have a strong role to play in promoting awareness of climate change and environmental sustainability which encompasses a rounded approach to energy provision and reduction of energy use. Where National Parks are promoting low impact renewable initiatives, such as wind, solar, biomass or micro renewables we support them but the impact of each needs to be assessed on its merits.
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