GRENERGY BATTERY STORAGE SCHEME REFUSED
GRENERGY BATTERY STORAGE SCHEME REFUSED
I am pleased to report that, on 4 March, ECDC’s Planning Committee voted to reject the application by Grenergy for a battery storage complex on agricultural land at Hightown Drove. In so doing, the Committee overturned a recommendation by its own planning officers to accept. No Committee member was in favour of the scheme.
Grenergy will almost certainly appeal the decision, so we are not out of the woods, but the delay of the appeal process is likely to undermine the viability of the scheme.
From my perspective, the issues that shaped the decision were:
– the absence of a credible safety plan. The failure to consider worse case scenarios, the complete absence of anything on the growing cyber threat and absence of technical detail, such as the type of battery technology that was to be employed, concerned Committee members
– the testimony of Burwell Energy Advisory Team and local residents about how low frequency noise from the nearby Weirs Drove battery storage scheme dogged their lives. Low Frequency Noise had been excluded from the developer’s noise report.
– testimony of the National Trust and local residents about how the scheme would degrade adjacent land that has been developed over the last decade to create a tranquil haven for people and wildlife and would undermine Reach’s Nature Recovery Strategy and the NT’s Wider Wicken Vision both of which have been endorsed by ECDC. The cumulative impact (this being the tenth green energy proposal in the area and the first to cross Hightown Drove) also had impact with the Committee.
– the sense that nobody would gain from the scheme apart from the developers. Under planning law developers do not have to demonstrate that a green energy scheme is needed. Nonetheless the Committee registered that the country now has a significant oversupply of battery storage schemes and that Grenergy’s proposal does not have a confirmed connection to the grid which made its benefit to the electricity supply system questionable. Members of the Committee saw the scheme as speculative and considered that the many harms that it would bring to our locality outweighed the very limited benefits it might offer.
Nick Acklam
