Mynydd y Gwair Wind Farm

Introduction

The proposed Mynydd y Gwair Wind Farm is located upon Common Land around 15 kilometres (9 miles) north of Swansea, South Wales.  The site is located within the administrative boundary of The City and County of Swansea and within one of the areas (Area E) identified by the Welsh Assembly Government as being most suitable for large-scale wind farm development within its Technical Advice Note 8 (TAN8).

Mynydd y Gwair is an important renewable energy project, and could generate up to around 28,000 homes (1) equivalent of electricity using the wind as its fuel source - almost a third the total number of households in the Swansea municipal area (2) - making a key contribution to Welsh Assembly Government’s low carbon energy strategy. The project also offers the potential to generate short and medium term contract opportunities for local civil engineering companies at the construction stage. 

The Mynydd y Gwair Wind Farm has been designed to minimise its environmental effects and ensure the continued use of the Common Land for grazing and recreational purposes.

To compensate for the land ‘removed’ from the Common so as to allow for the construction of the Wind Farm, additional land is to proposed to be ‘exchanged’ from normal agricultural land into the designated Common land.  The current area of land to be ‘exchanged’ would increase the overall size of the Common by some 7.86 hectares.

What’s happened so far

- An application for planning permission was made to The City and County of Swansea in September 2008 and one year later in October 2009 an appeal was lodged against the failure of the Council to determine the application.

- A Public Inquiry was held to examine the appeal during July and August 2010 and a decision was made by the Welsh Assembly Government in February 2011, to dismiss the appeal and the Common Land Exchange Orders. The reasons cited for dismissing the appeal related to the impact of the proposal upon peatland ecology and the location and management arrangements associated with the land to be exchanged into the Common.

- Having reviewed the minister's decision, RWE NRL believed that the conclusions reached by the Inspector at the Public Inquiry were flawed, in that the conclusions did not follow clearly and logically from the evidence presented at the inquiry. As a result, RWE NRL challenged the Inspectors report.

In July, 2011, a High Court Judge announced that he had upheld our challenge against the the Inspectors report, meaning that the planning application will potentially go back to public inquiry for redetermination. The High Court did not uphold our challenge over the refusal to grant Common Land consent.

Responding to the High Court ruling, RWE NRL said it was pleased with the outcome of the legal challenge and will now review the implications of this for the continued development of the project.

Our spokesperson said: “This decision is an important step in the development of a wind farm at Mynydd y Gwair. Wind farms are accepted as key to securing our future energy, and it is vitally important that such infrastructure projects are properly considered and given a fair hearing.

“This legal challenge focused on the Inspector’s decision making and conclusions. The conclusions did not follow logically from the evidence presented at the inquiry and the information recorded by the Inspector.

“This outcome now questions the Minister’s decision to reject planning permission, given that it was based on recommendations from the Inspector’s report which was reached through a flawed process.”
 
 
Footnotes
(1)Energy predicted to be generated by the proposal is derived using wind speeds monitored in the local area and applying trends from npower renewables' existing wind farm portfolio located across the UK. This enables a calculation to be made to estimate the average annual energy production based on 19 turbines each of rated capacity 2.5MW. The energy capture predicted and hence derived homes equivalent or emissions savings figures may change as further information is gathered.
Equivalent homes supplied is based on an annual electricity consumption per home of 4700 kWh, which is derived from a total UK domestic electricity consumption of 117.589 terawatt-hours (TWh) (The Digest of UK Energy Statistics 2005) and 25.2 million UK households (Mid-year Household Estimates published in 2004 by the Office for National Statistics).
 
(2) From the Census 2001, Office for National Statistics.