Battle of the wind farms: Can the ‘blockers’ beat the government? | Sc

“An ineffective form of renewable energy… carpet-bombing the countryside… irreversible damage.”

These are the noisy, angry and organised campaigners against onshore wind in Wales.

Dozens of new projects are set to sweep across the rolling hills of Cymru as the government races to hit its clean power targets.

It says it is willing to take on the “blockers” to build hundreds of these soaring steel giants, aiming to make energy cheaper, cleaner and more secure.

But in Wales, these “blockers” see themselves as environmentalists too: nature lovers who fear the plans will mar their countryside and culture forever.

They are convinced there are better ways for Wales to go green.

So who is really saving Wales?

“No more pylons” chant a few hundred protesters outside the Welsh parliament on a cold – not to mention windy – February lunchtime.

Many at the protest distance themselves from Reform UK politicians, who have vocally opposed onshore wind because they question the extent to which the climate is changing at all.

“Very few of us are climate deniers,” one protester says in Cardiff. “We all realise there is a problem… the question is: how do we resolve it?”

The answer, they say, is with a mixture of offshore wind, community projects and rooftop solar, arguing these can meet Wales’s needs without building turbines that will also send power to England.

For they are irked by a sense that history is repeating itself: another Welsh resource – following water and coal – harvested to keep England’s lights on.

But with electricity demand due to at least double in Wales by 2050, and 60% of it still coming from gas, Labour say doing without onshore wind is a luxury it cannot afford.

Welsh Labour told Sky News it would be “challenging to deliver the scale of electricity required at the pace needed for a climate emergency, if we were…