Energy and climate change secretary Chris Huhne has urged countryside conservationists to accept that landscape change is inevitable in the battle against climate change
Addressing the Campaign to Protect Rural England last week, Huhne said that trade-offs will be needed between the long-term survival of landscapes and the security and affordability of electricity supplies. “Sometimes, national need will mean we have to sit down and take a tough decision about local impacts,” he said.
“The reality is that the scale of the problem – and the potential solutions – means our landscape will change again, just as it did during previous industrial revolutions. It is inescapable. You cannot keep things the same based on unsustainable energy. If we are to conserve the best of our past, we have to embrace the low-carbon future,”
Well-planned energy infrastructure could enhance the landscape, Huhne said. “Rural England is often a vision of how we want things to be; a vision that we have exported across the world. Norfolk’s windmills and Westmorland’s watermills are an integral part of our countryside. If we strike the right balance, perhaps the next generation of green energy will leave a similar legacy,” he suggested.
The full text of the speech is available on DECCs website.