The largest developer of onshore wind turbines in Wales says it is committed to building 200 turbines in the country by 2030, meeting around a quarter of Wales’ electricity demand. Many of them will be more than 200 metres tall and they’ll require 60 miles of pylons to be connected to the national grid hookup in Carmarthenshire.
Rural Wales has been targeted as a major player in the UK’s aim to reach net zero, and Cardiff-based Bute Energy is the company behind many of the energy parks already planned in Wales. The company is known to already be behind 16 energy parks in Wales including three within 17 square miles of each other in the Radnorshire hills, which you can read about here. Further wind farms are planned by RES, EDF, Statkraft, Pennant Walters, RWE Renewables, Vattenfall, Galileo, Muirhall Energy, Coriolis Energy, Cenin, and Bryngygda Wind Farm Ltd.
Bute Energy’s own plans for one of the wind farms at Nant Mithil near New Radnor provide a picture of the task to build one and the potential ecological impact. The company says at Nant Mithil the foundations for its 31 proposed turbines there would be five metres deep and 25m wide and would need up to 59,000 cubic metres of concrete.
Bute Energy’s Twyn Hywel wind farm, consisting of 14 wind turbines which will straddle the local authority areas of Caerphilly borough and Rhondda Cynon Taf, was approved by the Welsh Government in November and is likely to be the first wind farm built in Wales in four years with a target for completion in 2026.
Drive through the villages in mid Powys and you’ll see many landowners have erected signs telling Bute Energy and GreenGen Cymru to stay off their land
(Image: Jonathon Hill/Media Wales)
GreenGen is a subsidiary company to Bute and plans two pylon highways to Carmarthen to connect all the proposed wind farms, but the plans haven’t gone down well with everyone
(Image: Jonathon Hill/Media Wales)
According to The Times Bute Energy’s managing director Stuart George said Bute would achieve 15% of the capacity needed to meet the UK government’s clean power targets by the end of the decade. In rural Wales the plans have not gone down particularly well – drive through the villages in mid Powys and you’ll see many landowners have erected signs telling Bute Energy and GreenGen Cymru to stay off their land.
GreenGen is a subsidiary company to Bute and plans two pylon highways to Carmarthen to connect all the proposed wind farms. Farmers and landowners have received letters informing them their land would be used for pylons which would travel 60 miles from mid Wales to a substation in Carmarthen connecting the planned wind farms to the national grid. Campaigners say they are not against renewable energy but are against wind farms being built at scale across Welsh land rich in ecology and relied on by locals for tourism and farming.
Mr George said: “We have had some challenges, there’s no doubt about it – it’s a difficult balance. What we like to pride ourselves on is that we go above and beyond in terms of the level of community and public engagement and consultation we do. But it’s not always easy and there are some who we won’t be able to convince.”