Report calls for more UK wind farms

July 7th 2010

The UK needs to substantially increase the number of wind farms being built if climate change targets are to be met, according to a new report.

The Committee on Climate Change's annual progress report indicated that CO2 emissions fell by 8.6 per cent last year.

However, this was mainly due to the effects of the recession and the report stressed that more wind farms are essential to ongoing carbon reduction.

According to the figures, just 0.7 gigawatts of new wind capacity was built in the last year, compared to the required three gigawatts needed to stay on target.

There are growing concerns that approvals and planning periods for new wind farms are taking too long.

Niall Stuart, director of Scottish Renewables, commented: "The UK lags way behind other European countries like Germany, Denmark and Spain in terms of the deployment of onshore wind.

"The Scottish Government did make a massive improvement in terms of the speed of the planning process but we still think that a lot more could be done."

He added that the report illustrates how important renewable energy is if the UK is to tackle climate change.