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

In every decade before Net Zero mania took hold, the electricity grid was understood as a system. A synchronous AC system built on simple principles: large rotating generators—coal, gas, nuclear, hydro—all spinning at 3,000rpm, producing power while naturally stabilising the entire grid. The physics was elegant.The engineering was proven.And the stability was free. These machines…

By Shane Oxer Campaigner for fairer and affordable energy Introduction The United Kingdom has just recorded one of its largest annual increases in solar capacity, adding 1.9 GW of new photovoltaic installations in the 12 months to October 2025.[1] Total installed solar capacity now stands at 20.7 GW, with a surge of large utility-scale solar…

Britain is entering the most dangerous phase of its modern energy history and the warning lights are now flashing red. This week’s analysis from the National Energy System Operator (NESO), reported by The Telegraph, confirms what engineers, analysts, and campaigners have been warning for years: The UK is on course for severe gas shortages, just…

By Shane Oxer — Campaigner for fairer and affordable energy Introduction: Government by Spreadsheet Yorkshire is being told, not asked, how it must live. The Local Area Energy Plans (LAEPs) for York and North Yorkshire lay out, with startling confidence, how our homes will be heated, how our countryside will be carved up, and where…

🌾 1. Yorkshire’s Iconic Landscapes Are Under Attack Here is the Yorkshire that millions of people come to see every year. the Yorkshire that generations have fought to protect:These dry-stone walls, rolling pastures, farmsteads and open views are not “empty spaces” for solar developers to colonise.Yet the LAEPs label huge swathes of this land as…

The Guardian wants every criticism of UK energy policy to be dismissed as “denial.”But this debate has nothing to do with denying climate impacts — it’s about rejecting solutions that don’t work. Response to Monbiot’s Argum It is not about denying climate impacts .It is about rejecting solutions that simply do not work. The Guardian…

COP30 has now drawn to a close in Belém, and for the first time in years the climate summit felt less like a stage-managed ritual and more like a system hitting its limits. The language was familiar, the slogans unchanged, but the cracks in the Net Zero narrative were impossible to hide. What emerged was…

By Shane Oxer — Campaigner for fairer and affordable energy For years we’ve been sold the idea that wind turbines and solar farms would bring Britain cheap, clean, abundant electricity. We were told renewables would “pay for themselves,” cut bills, and free us from global energy markets.But today, as the National Grid’s own data shows…

For over a decade, the British public has been told that the future of electricity will be “clean”, “cheap”, and “secure”. This vision has been repeated with such conviction by ministers, quangos, think-tanks and energy companies that it has become accepted as fact. Yet every real-world indicator now points in the opposite direction. We are…

How Wind and Solar Are Destroying Britain’s Landscapes, Forcing a £300 Billion Grid Rebuild, and Still Leaving Us Powerless in Winter By Shane Oxer Campaigner for fairer and affordable energy Britain is being physically reshaped before our eyes. From the Scottish Highlands down through Yorkshire, across Lincolnshire, and along the Kent coast, a web of…

When a 57-year-old transformer exploded at National Grid’s North Hyde substation near Heathrow earlier this year, it didn’t just plunge the UK’s busiest airport into chaos. It exposed a national crisis that has been ignored for decades: Britain’s power grid is dangerously old, under-maintained, and unfit for the renewable-heavy energy system politicians keep promising.The fire…

The UK Government has announced plans to cut electricity prices for AI data centres in central Scotland by £24 per MWh, claiming that the measure will be “cost-neutral” for households. It is an attractive line for ministers who want to present the UK as a global hub for artificial intelligence while reassuring the public that…

The UK Government’s Resilience Action Plan (14 July 2025) is, on its surface, presented as a forward-looking strategy to strengthen national preparedness. Yet a close reading reveals something far more serious: for the first time in modern British history, the government has formally prepared for the possibility of a National Power Outage (NPO) — a…

1. A Local Plan Consultation Designed to Be Impossible The Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority has issued:hundreds of documents,covering twenty years of growth,with only a couple of weeks before the December hearings.This is not consultation. It is an overload that makes proper assessment impossible, especially for rural communities without the resources or specialist planning knowledge…

Introduction Ed Miliband has once again stepped forward with a dramatic pledge under Labour’s Net Zero agenda: 9.3 million heat pumps installed by 2035. It is presented as a bold environmental achievement, a modernisation of British heating, and a sign of “global climate leadership.” What it represents in practice, however, is something entirely different: a…

The world is quietly shifting. While COP30 continues in Belém with the usual declarations of urgency, solidarity, and “historic commitments,” something far more consequential is happening behind the scenes. The financial and political foundations beneath the global climate agenda are starting to crack. Germany — once hailed as Europe’s climate leader — has just slashed…

By Shane Oxer — Campaigner for fairer and affordable energy Introduction The resignation of BBC Director-General Tim Davie and the CEO of BBC News after the exposure of doctored climate footage represents far more than a newsroom failure. It is the moment Britain finally confronts a deeper truth: our most powerful public institutions have not…

Britain is preparing for what many are already calling the Budget of Doom A moment when the Treasury finally collides with economic reality, debt pressure, and a decade of energy policy built on unreliable renewables and legally binding climate targets. It will be presented as a fiscal storm driven by global pressures, geopolitics, or demographic…

In the past few weeks, the BBC has faced a fresh storm of criticism about political bias, selective reporting, and its increasingly one-sided coverage of energy and climate issues. Whether it is the BBC’s senior leadership being accused of pushing “approved narratives,” or the quiet sidelining of dissenting scientific voices, the trend is unmistakable: the…