Contribution
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Alec. I wish hon. Members a happy World Curlew Day--tan, small, slender, often up to its knees in muck and at the risk of extinction in West Yorkshire--I also congratulate the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) on securing the debate.
This debate, much like my constituency, comes under the shadow of plans to build England’s largest wind farm on protected peatland on Walshaw moor. I believe it is a uniquely beautiful landscape, resplendent with curlews, lapwings and other moorland birds. As a fell runner, I love that environment, which is one of the most special places on earth. From Top Withens to the open moorland, I am proud to have one of the most beautiful constituencies.
Its beauty and the curlews, however, are not in and of themselves a reason to block the development of any renewable energy project. I subscribe to the view that we face a climate and nature emergency. Climate change is real and man-made. Our energy use makes it vital to ramp up the building of green energy infrastructure for the future as quickly as possible. For that reason, there would have to be clear and compelling evidence for me to question the development of a wind farm or any other renewable energy project.
We must follow the science, however. The more we learn about peat and its role in absorbing carbon, the clearer it is that building on peat will do more harm than good. Peatland covers just 3% of the world’s land surface but stores around 30% of its soil carbon. Disturbing peat by building wind farms risks releasing that stored carbon, likely cancelling the carbon saved through wind farms, particularly bearing in mind that these wind turbines have just a 25-year lifespan.
Research by the University of Aberdeen, referred to earlier by the hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley, suggests that developers should avoid building wind farms on peatland altogether. In response, the Scottish Government have tightened their policy in that area. In England, those considerations are not applied consistently, but that needs to be reformed and brought into line.
As I have said in multiple representations to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, the fundamental problem that we face is, unsurprisingly, one of joined-up Government. Too frequently under the last Government, the environment and climate change were treated as an afterthought and not as central to the business of Government.
Just last month, the Environmental Audit Committee highlighted the lack of joined-up thinking between DEFRA and DESNZ, and the proposal that we are discussing is a clear example. On the one hand, DEFRA has committed £85 million to restoring and managing peatlands, preserving our environment and offsetting our carbon emissions. On the other hand, if DESNZ signs off projects like this, it will damage those peatlands without the same scrutiny as other developments, so we have to take a step back and assess whether it is truly the right course of action. Our Government’s revised national planning policy framework argues against developments that involve peat extraction, but that is contradicted if we continue to develop these projects. Although it is not okay for someone to dig up a bit of peat to put on their garden, it is okay to displace 8,000 cubic metres of peat to build a wind turbine.
Calderdale energy park represents a risk to a moor where in places the peat is more than 2 metres deep, according to Natural England’s peat map. As a fell runner, I can attest to that, because I have fallen into some of those peat bogs. My hon. Friend the Minister for Nature, put it starkly:
“Our peatlands are this country’s Amazon Rainforest and in desperate need of restoration and protection”.
She is absolutely right—more so, in fact, because peatland stores 30 times more carbon per hectare than the rainforest. Let us be clear: we would join in the international opprobrium if the Brazilian Government were to fell trees in the Amazon to install solar panels in the hope of securing carbon credits. We should apply the same seriousness to the protection of one of our most carbon-rich landscapes.