I recently phoned up our local planning officer to take issue with the lack of consultation on a 15 metre wind turbine which is going up in a prominent position 800 metres from the back of our house. He admitted that perhaps he ought to have consulted our village as the only settlement affected by the structure. But he added that, even if he had refused consent, the applicant would have probably won on appeal. He was still feeling sore about an appeal he had lost down the road. “When it comes to green energy, all normal planning policies go out the window.”
This started me thinking. He’s right. Take a look at the house in middle of the photo. I used to live there. It was erected about 10 years ago. It is opposite a beautiful church slap bang in the middle of a conservation area. The conservation status was deemed so important that, at considerable expense, the local authority match-funded European money to put the overhead electricity and telephone cables underground.
So when the developers applied for consent to put up the house, the planners were, quite rightly, very fussy. The building is finished in traditional local bricks laid to mimic Flemish Bond (long one, short one, long one – for those of you who aren’t familiar with the technical terms). The roof has a traditional Suffolk asymmetric pitch and is clad in local black pantiles.
After all this effort to get something that fits in, along comes a new owner who takes a shine to new solar panels. Perhaps he’s a committed environmentalist? Perhaps he works for Everest? Perhaps he thinks that, like Stonecrete, they will increase the value of his house? Perhaps he is gullible and fell for the salesman’s hard sell “Half price for demonstration projects in your area Sir?” Who knows? Come what may, I wouldn’t mind so much if this chap and others like him were going to save the planet. But they are not. The science is unproven. The embedded carbon used to make the photovoltaics may well be greater than the carbon saved over the lifetime of the installation.
Just look at the panels. They might be at home on a Mir Space Station or on the set of Startrek, but they look totally out of place in an old Suffolk village. Would they have been allowed if they were necessary for say television reception or receiving broadband? Of course not. Would any old plastic framed thermally efficient replacement windows been accepted? No, the planners would have insisted on something in keeping with the building. Can the planners do anything about these monstrous solar panels? No. About 18 months ago, government changed the rules. You can almost now put up what you like on a roof (as opposed to a wall) in a conservation area. (Who puts up such panels on walls?)
When it comes to green energy generation anything goes.
