Environment and Sustainability Committee
Inquiry into Energy Policy and Planning in Wales

EPP 30 –Peter Foulkes

To the Clerk, Environment and Sustainability Committee.

Dear Sir/Madam

I would like to add the following comment to your inquiry on energy policy and planning in Wales.

As we seek out alternative sources of energy we must not forget the effect each source may have on the Principality’s landscapes.  Nowhere is this more evident than with the proliferation of wind factories across large areas of ‘Wild Wales.’  As an example I would like to point out the incongruity of WAG delineating SSAD (Nant y Moch) under Tan 8 as suitable for large scale wind farming, failing to take notice of its own conservation body (CCW) describing much of the area as being of outstanding landscape value.  Such industrialisation of the Cambrian Mountains, which were almost designated as a National Park in the 1960s, is not an appropriate use of the heart of the Nation.  Let us not make a similar mistake again with energy policy, as we did when we dumped a monolithic nuclear power station in the middle of Snowdonia, of failing a cherished resource – our landscapes.

I would be willing to speak to this, if invited by the Committee.

Yours faithfully,

Peter Foulkes