by Saunton Sands is used to the pressure of the Atlantic Ocean, but it’s a net-zero wind farm that threatens to whip up a storm at Devon’s beauty spot.
Developers want to dig and drill through parts of the historic landscape – a favorite of Hollywood filmmakers, celebrities and hundreds of thousands of tourists – to connect electrical cables to new offshore wind turbines.
Villagers are protesting against the plans, which they say spell environmental “disaster” for one of Britain’s best coastal destinations.
This series shows the growing feeling in Conservative heartlands that opposes the risk of climate change doing more harm than good.
Next to the three-mile surf beach at Saunton Sands, where US troops trained in 1944 for the D-Day landings, a construction site for the cables would include an excellent golf course, a nature reserve and a designated area of outstanding natural beauty. beauty.
The scheme, called White Cross, is among a handful of pilots for offshore floating turbines using westerly winds in the Celtic Sea, which experts say are paving the way for a “new frontier” in renewable energy production. renewed British.
According to White Cross, a joint venture between the Japanese company Flotation Energy, led by the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Stephen, and the Spanish firm Cobra, the cable route is necessary because of the wind farm, which would be the size of 7,000 football fields 32 miles offshore. , would help “achieve net zero by 2050”.
Helen Cooper, a Royal Mail worker, is helping to lead the fight to stop the route. “With a net zero it’s the ‘how’ not the ‘what’ – we’re a classic example of just getting through the road,” the 59-year-old told the Telegraph in the quaint village of Braunton nearby which is sprinkled with independent shops that would. be under siege with 92 HGVs working on the project going forward every day.
“We are a middle-class audience and the White Cross could have taken us with them, but instead the consultation seems to have been a tick-box exercise and people have been kept under wraps.”
Ms Cooper heads Save Our Sands, a group which supports the wind farm but wants the cables built elsewhere, along with GP Dr Finola O’Neill, 52, and retired HMRC civil servant Ruth McDonough.
The beach, rated among the best in Britain, is the backdrop for the Tom Cruise film The Edge of Tomorrow, Robbie Williams’ Angels music video and Pink Floyd’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason album cover. Around 40 per cent of Saunton’s popular car park would be closed for cableway works.
“This will be a disaster for the local community – many local shops rely on their summer trade and Braunton already has terrible traffic,” Ms McDonough, 67, said. “This is a more cavalier approach to local businesses that we will all suffer as a result, in fact I am concerned that some of them will not survive.”
The 50m wide (160ft) underground cable would drop into the trenches at Saunton Sands before crossing under the greens at Saunton Gold Club which has two championship courses in the top 100 in the country, including the historic 18th green . It would then cross Braunton marshes, floodplains and the Torridge Taw Estuary, where it would connect to the National Grid at East Yelland substation.
The White Cross plans to build 12 building compounds and a four-mile access road through the area, one of seven Unesco biosphere reserves in the UK. The company has been accused of discarding less damaged cable routes, such as along the estuary or connecting to a planned pipeline from Morocco a short distance up the coast, on cost grounds.
North Devon Council is making a decision on the planning application next month, with works on the foreshore between 2025 and 2027 if approved. The Crown Estate granted rights to the offshore wind farm in 2021.
Selaine Saxby, the Conservative MP for North Devon, accused the White Cross of “taking advantage of the planning system” by making the wind farm 100 megawatts in size, meaning the decision will be made at a local rather than national level. “It is very disappointing that the White Cross project took a decision on the cable corridor they chose without sufficient consultation and they are now trying to impose their choice on the local community,” she said.
“Having been involved in the wind floating offshore in the Celtic Sea since I was elected, and the need for developers to work with communities to bring these vital projects to fruition, it was clear to me that they should not cause more damage make for the environment we are trying to make. defend.”
Almost 500 objections
Natural England and the Environment Agency have lodged hundreds of pages of concerns about the project, and almost 500 local people have lodged objections to the planning application.
The net zero battle is the latest to light up. Earlier this month, a government report warned that 300 towns and villages across rural England and Wales could be exposed to thousands of electricity pylons needed to expand the National Grid to meet net-zero targets. And about Labour’s plans to achieve net zero, leader Sir Keir Starmer has said that neighborhoods would not be able to veto the construction of wind farms on the coast.
One of the landowners most likely to be influenced by the White Cross would be Hector Christie, a sustainability advocate who owns rural plots and the stately homes of Tapeley Park. A spokesman for the Christie Estate said: “While the estate supports renewable energy, it shares many of the concerns about the project that Braunton residents have expressed throughout the planning process, including those of businesses in the community in general which includes Saunton beach. it is a tourist attraction.”
White Cross said in an earlier statement: “More than 20 different coastal cable routes have been assessed along a significant length of the North Devon Coast… The selected cable route avoids significant residential areas and mitigates the potential impact on the Braunton Special Area of Conservation Burrows (SAC) by using a trenchless technique to install the cable underground without disturbing the surface. The remainder of the route will travel outside the SAC and other Sites of Special Scientific Interest towards the Tawny Estuary.”
North Devon Council said it will “balance the benefits and impacts” when considering all matters.
Flotation Energy, which runs 13 gigawatts of offshore wind farms in the UK and around the world, and Cobra have been contacted for comment.
