Monkwith

Much of the fossil fuel used in the UK’s conventional power stations is now imported. The UK became a net importer of coal in 1997 and a net importer of gas in 2006. It is likely to become a net importer of oil by 2010.

Over recent time fossil fuel prices have been rising significantly on global markets as demand increases. Wind energy, is a clean and freely available resource that can be harnessed to produce power at the lowest environmental cost. Utilising the UK’s substantial wind resource would assist in reducing consumption of fossil fuels and help to reduce our dependency on imported resources.

The UK Government has set the target that 10% of energy is to be generated from renewable sources by 2010 and 20% by 2021. Carbon emissions are to be cut by 80% from 1990 levels by 2050.

The Yorkshire and Humber Plan encourages the East Riding to contribute 41 MW of renewable electricity generation capacity to help achieve the Humber region’s target of 124 MW by 2010. These targets increase to 148 MW for East Riding and 350 MW for the Region by 2020. Currently there is one operational wind farm in the East Riding at Out Newton, with a capacity of 9 MW. Lissett Airfield wind farm is under construction and will have a capacity of 30 MW. One further wind farm has been approved at Hall Farm, which has a generation capacity of 36 MW. A number of other wind farms have also been proposed as well as plans for the generation of electricity using bio-mass technologies.