Miliband: Wind farms to aid economy
The expansion of wind energy along with other renewable sources brings with it the prospect of huge opportunities for jobs and economic growth in Britain, Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband has said.
Countries such as Germany and Denmark were already benefiting from a jobs advantage because of their head-start in generating energy from renewable sources, he said.
Reforms of the planning system were needed in the UK along with greater efforts to persuade people of the benefits of greener technologies amid fears households could be hit with higher bills.
Mr Miliband spoke at the official launch of the biggest onshore wind farm in the South of England which has the capacity to generate power to 33,000 homes.
Each of the 26 wind turbines on isolated farmland at Little Cheyne Court, Romney Marsh, on the Kent-East Sussex border, is 377ft (115m) high and weighs more than 275 tonnes. The opening comes ahead of the publication on Wednesday of the Government's UK Low Carbon Transition Plan for decarbonising the UK and maximising the benefits of low-carbon industries.
Business leaders at the CBI have attacked the Government's energy policy as "disjointed", targeted too much at wind power and under-investing in nuclear and clean coal.
But Mr Miliband said Britain needs to harness all technologies such as wind, fuel and clean coal to help meet challenging targets and counter the threat of climate change. He said: "The scale of the challenge is very big. We need all the technology at our disposal - renewable energy, including wind and marine, nuclear and clean coal - all have to make a contribution."
He spoke about objections from local communities to having wind farms near their homes but said Britain needs to diversify its energy sources in order to be less dependent on imported gas.
"We understand the objections. They can be legitimate objections but we do have a job of persuading people that we have got to get renewable energy somewhere.
"We have to diversify our energy sources, we need home grown energy so that we don't have to be dependent on imported gas as the North Sea is declining in terms of the gas it provides. We understand that people have concerns but we have to have wind turbines somewhere and we have to find the most sensitive places to have them."
