We’re about to see a boom in wind power at sea and on land

An army of gentle giants is assembling on horizons around Britain.

Wind turbines – thousands of them. Bigger, better, more efficient, and supporting ever more domestic jobs – this technology is on course to help pull the UK out of its last grim dependence on fossil fuel-fired electricity and set us on a path for an energy independent future.

Wind already supplies around a quarter of all the UK’s electricity. The total capacity of the UK’s windfarms is 10.5 gigawatts.

But astonishing new analysis of projects underway around the UK’s coasts reveal we are about to see wind power expand substantially – up to 86GW is on the way – eight times the capacity we currently have. A government target of 40GW by 2030 is expected to be expanded. Change is happening fast.

Plummeting costs, demand for clean energy from consumers, and vast areas of seabed being made available by the Crown Estate are together fuelling an incredible roll out of clean, green energy provision which will see the UK become the world’s number one producer of electricity from wind, surpassing China and the USA.

This isn’t just a giddy day dream. It is already happening. Even as nay-sayers on the right, such as Donald Trump, Nigel Farage and his ally Richard Tice attempt to revive a Victorian-era passion for fossil fuels and attack turbines with all the coherence of Don Quixote after a night on the town.

Not least as discussion in the top tier of government has turned to loosening strict planning permissions which have effectively banned the building of onshore wind farms.

Business and energy minister Kwasi Kwarteng has indicated his support for reviving the drive for onshore wind, which unsurprisingly, is even cheaper to install than out at sea.

The prime minister is expected to approve the relaxation of the planning regime, despite opposition from within his Cabinet.

According to the FT, six of Johnson’s Cabinet signed a 2012 letter calling for the government to end support for onshore wind projects, including Priti Patel, Jacob Rees-Mogg and chief whip Chris Heaton-Harris, and some of them have not revised their position over the last decade.

These individuals’ continued Cervantes’-style delusions put them on the same muddled page as Trump and Farage, whose grasp of energy and economy are shonky to say the least – calling for greater fossil fuel dependency even as prices surge.

Speaking to The Independent on the future role onshore wind will play in our energy mix, Dr Doug Parr, policy director at Greenpeace UK highlighted the forces already driving us towards cheap wind power, and why it will become increasingly important.

He said: “All energy scenarios that look at cost effectiveness, from the Climate Change Committee to the National Grid or the National Infrastructure Commission, show substantial growth over the next decade in onshore wind generation, and that was before cost became the urgent priority it is now.

"Onshore is quicker and generally cheaper than offshore wind, so where nature and the local community can accommodate it we should be forging ahead. This should not mean an unregulated free for all, but a responsive system that allows community participation, ownership and if necessary compensation, and recognises the need to ensure biodiversity isn’t compromised.

"Those projects that qualify should compete for the contracts government offers, which need to be a larger annual volume than that currently on the table. For too long England has had a dysfunctional development framework for onshore wind, and the government must now realise that if this was ever a luxury we could afford, we definitely can’t afford it now.”

At the moment, the English planning laws mean gas or nuclear power stations can get the green light, while a complaint from just a single individual can end plans to build an onshore wind farm.

It is time to carefully update the rules to help us better protect the world we live in.