Category: The fight against the destruction of our farms and greenbelt

For years we were told high energy bills were “Putin’s fault”. That once gas prices fell, electricity would become cheap again. Gas prices have fallen. Bills haven’t. Now the chief executive of Centrica , owner of British Gas , has shattered the narrative. Chris O’Shea says electricity prices in 2030 will be higher than at…

In November 2021, at COP26 in Glasgow, a remarkable claim was made. The financial system, we were told, had pivoted. Governments might legislate and regulate, but markets would deliver transformation. Through the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero, institutions managing some $130 trillion in assets had “aligned” behind Net Zero. Climate was now, in the…

This week, Great British Energy – Nuclear welcomed plans for up to 12 advanced modular reactors at Hartlepool. A partnership between X-Energy and Centrica promising 2,500 jobs and near-continuous industrial power. At the same time, environmental and permitting work is accelerating at Wylfa as Britain positions itself to build a fleet of Small Modular Reactors.…

Britain has just awarded 4.9 gigawatts of new solar capacity under the latest Contracts for Difference round. On paper, it sounds vast. Gigawatts always do. The language of scale is politically intoxicating. Ministers speak of transformation. Press releases speak of progress. Campaigners speak of momentum. But electricity systems do not operate on press releases. They…

This week, Ofgem confirmed that 210 out of 340 renewable energy projects scheduled to connect to Britain’s electricity grid in 2026 and 2027 are now expected to miss their deadlines.[1] These are not peripheral schemes. They are the very projects described as “imperative” to delivering the Government’s ambition of 95 per cent clean power by…

I didn’t arrive at this position because it was fashionable.I arrived here because I have stood in places that still breathe. Places where land, history, and silence are woven together so tightly that once you disturb them, you cannot simply stitch them back together again. I see the planet not as a problem to be…

To the planning inspectors, policy advisers and Whitehall lobbyists reading environmental statements from behind a desk, this is a warning , not a slogan.What you are seeing across South Yorkshire, the Humber and the Don catchment right now is not a theoretical risk, a worst-case scenario, or a “modelled outcome”. It is reality.Fields submerged. Roads…

Seventeen years after the passage of the Climate Change Act 2008, the practical outcomes of the UK’s Net Zero strategy are now visible across household bills, industrial competitiveness, grid stability, and land use. While the policy was sold as a route to affordability, resilience, and green prosperity, the evidence increasingly shows the opposite. Rather than…

The screenshot does not show a single bad hour or an unusual dip in generation. It shows average UK electricity output over an entire winter week. During that week, the UK’s installed solar capacity of roughly 22 GW delivered an average output of around 0.5 GW — just 2–3 per cent of nameplate capacity.[1] This…

No Grid = No Approval In a quiet but highly significant development, the proposed Kilnside Energy Park in Rutland , a large solar and battery scheme promoted by Aukera , has reportedly been withdrawn from the planning process. There has been no dramatic announcement and no formal admission of failure. Instead, the developer used a…

When a serving European prime minister describes a central pillar of EU energy policy as “the stupidity of the century,” it is more than rhetoric. It is an admission that something has gone badly wrong. Last week, Bart De Wever, Prime Minister of Belgium, delivered a blunt assessment of Europe’s energy trajectory. Speaking at a…

In December, the National Energy System Operator (NESO) and Ofgem announced that Britain’s grid connections crisis had been fixed. “Gate 2” had cleaned the queue. A readiness test had replaced the old free-for-all. A pipeline of 283 GW of generation and storage to 2035 had been “unlocked”. But if you look at the maps ,…

Solar energy has been sold to the public as the clean symbol of modern progress. Silent, emission-free in operation, and powered by sunlight, it feels like the perfect antidote to fossil fuels. Panels now cover rooftops, car parks, deserts, and increasingly, farmland. For many, solar is not just technology   it is virtue made visible. But…

The quiet line buried in the lease between Doncaster Council and Peel Group explains more about the real delay to reopening Doncaster Sheffield Airport than any public statement so far: electricity use on the site must not exceed 1 MVA at any time. That figure is not a planning technicality. It is an electrical ceiling…

By Shane Oxer. Campaigner for fairer and affordable energy Richard Eden’s diary column wasn’t meant to be an environmental dispatch. It was a society story: titled landowners, old friends of princes, and a “500-strong rebellion” on a great estate. But he got one thing exactly right , and it changes the entire frame. He described…

The project, promoted by RWE, was first withdrawn in August 2025 after it became clear that the developer could not say with certainty where the scheme would connect to the electricity grid, or when that connection would be delivered. For a project seeking nationally significant status, that is not a minor omission. It goes to…

By any normal definition, an energy system that requires permanent state support, permanent price guarantees, permanent grid underwriting and permanent market rigging is not an energy system at all. It is a fiscal programme with turbines attached. This week, the Financial Times quietly reported that Britain’s renewable subsidy bill has climbed above £8 billion a…

🚨 THIS IS THE MOMENT: HOW TO STOP THE COUNTRYSIDE BEING SACRIFICEDFor months — even years — people across the country have been asking the same question:“Why does it feel like every field is under threat?”Solar farms.Battery sites.Substations.Pylons.Grid corridors.Always in the countryside.Always on farmland.Always “strategic”.Always pushed through even when communities object.Now we know why.The Government…

Britain’s energy crisis is no longer about fuel. It is no longer even about technology. It is about systems, incentives, and financial structures that have drifted so far from physical reality that they now require political management to survive. No company better illustrates this than Octopus Energy. The poster child of the UK’s Net Zero…