Devon beauty spot threatened with wind turbine ‘disaster’ in name of net zero
Saunton Sands is accustomed to bearing the brunt of the Atlantic Ocean, but it is a net zero wind farm that threatens to whip up a storm at the Devon beauty spot.
Developers want to dig up and drill through parts of the historic landscape, a favourite for Hollywood filmmakers, celebrities and hundreds of thousands of tourists – to link electric cables to new offshore wind turbines.
Villagers are rising up against the plans, which they say spell environmental “disaster” for one of Britain’s finest coastal destinations.
The row captures a growing feeling in Conservative heartlands that crusades against climate change risk doing more harm than good.
Alongside the sweeping three-mile surfing beach of Saunton Sands, where US troops trained in 1944 for the D-Day landings, a building site for the cables would span a world-class golf course, a nature reserve and a designated area of outstanding natural beauty.
The scheme, named White Cross, is among a handful of pilots for floating offshore turbines using westerly winds in the Celtic Sea, which experts say is paving the way for a “new frontier” in Britain’s renewable energy production.
According to White Cross, a joint venture between Japanese company Flotation Energy, led by the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Stephen, and Spanish firm Cobra, the cable route is essential because the wind farm, which would be the size of 7,000 football pitches 32 miles offshore, would help “reach net zero by 2050”.
Helen Cooper, a Royal Mail worker, is helping lead the fight to stop the route. “With net zero it’s the ‘how’ not the ‘what’ – we’re the classic example of just being railroaded through,” the 59-year-old told The Telegraph in Braunton, a nearby quaint village sprinkled with independent shops that would be blighted with 92 HGVs working on the project passing every day.
“We’re a middle-class audience and White Cross could have taken us with them, but instead the consultation seems like a tick box exercise and people were hoodwinked.”
Ms Cooper leads Save Our Sands, a group that supports the wind farm but wants the cables taken elsewhere, along with GP Dr Finola O’Neill, 52, and retired HMRC civil servant Ruth McDonough.
The beach, rated among Britain’s best, has served as the backdrop for the Tom Cruise film The Edge of Tomorrow, Robbie Williams’ Angels music video and the album cover for Pink Floyd’s A Momentary Lapse of Reason. Some 40 per cent of Saunton’s popular car park would be closed for cable works.
“This will be a disaster for the local community – lots of local shops rely on their summer trade and Braunton already has dreadful traffic,” Ms McDonough, 67, said. “This is a cavalier approach to local businesses that we will all suffer as a result of, in fact I worry some won’t survive.”
The 50m-wide (160ft) underground cable would make landfall in trenches at Saunton Sands before crossing beneath several greens at Saunton Golf Club whose two championship courses are in the top 100 in the country, including the historic 18th green. It would then cross Braunton marshes, floodplains and the Taw Torridge Estuary, where it would link with the National Grid at the East Yelland substation.
White Cross plans to build 12 construction compounds and a four-mile access road through the area, one of just seven Unesco biosphere reserves in the UK. The company has been accused of discarding less damaging cable routes, such as along the estuary or linking to a planned pipeline from Morocco a short distance up the coast, on cost grounds.
North Devon Council is deciding on the planning application next month, with onshore works taking place between 2025 and 2027 if it is approved. Rights for the offshore wind farm were given by The Crown Estate in 2021.
Selaine Saxby, the Conservative MP for North Devon, has accused White Cross of “taking advantage of the planning system” by making the wind farm 100 megawatts in size, meaning it will be decided at a local rather than national level. “It is very disappointing that the White Cross project took a decision on their chosen cable corridor without adequate consultation and are now trying to impose their choice on the local community,” she said.
“Having championed floating offshore wind in the Celtic Sea since my election, and the need for developers to work with communities to bring these vital projects to fruition, I have been clear that they should not cause more damage to the environment that we are trying to protect.”
Nearly 500 objections
Natural England and the Environment Agency have filed hundreds of pages of concerns about the project, while nearly 500 locals have made objections to the planning application.
It is the latest net zero battle to flare up. Earlier this month, a government report warned that 300 towns and villages across rural England and Wales could be in view of thousands of electricity pylons needed to expand the National Grid to meet net zero targets. And under Labour’s plans to hit net zero, leader Sir Keir Starmer has said neighbourhoods would not be able to veto the construction of onshore wind farms.
One of the major landowners affected by White Cross would be Hector Christie, a sustainability advocate who owns swathes of rural land and Tapeley Park stately home. A spokesman for the Christie Estate said: “While the estate is a supporter of renewable energy it shares many of the concerns about the project voiced through the planning process by the residents of Braunton, including those of businesses in the wider community for whom Saunton beach is a key tourist attraction.”
White Cross said in an earlier statement: “Over 20 different onshore 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 impacts to the Braunton Burrows Special Area of Conservation (SAC) by using a trenchless technique to install the cable underground without disturbing the surface. The remainder of the route will travel outside of the SAC and other identified Sites of Special Scientific Interest towards the Taw Estuary.”
North Devon Council said it “will be balancing the benefits and impacts” and considering all materials.
Flotation Energy, which runs 13 gigawatts of offshore wind farms in the UK and around the world, and Cobra have been contacted for comment.
