Instead of a slingshot, the Davids are brandishing a sculpture and a coffee table book. Their Goliaths are a Norwegian energy company and a UK energy secretary with renewable targets to meet.<\/p>\n
A fierce battle has begun over one of England\u2019s tallest windfarms, proposed for deep peat moorland overlooking the Yorkshire Dales national park<\/a>, in what residents say will mark the irrevocable industrialisation of their rural landscape.<\/p>\n A local sculptor<\/a> has constructed a scale model of one of Hope Moor windfarm<\/a>\u2019s 20 turbines, whose blade tips will reach 200m \u2013 as high as the \u201cskyscraper\u201d in Deansgate, Manchester, which is the tallest building outside London.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s all very well talking about 200m but it\u2019s hard to visualise it,\u201d said Michael Kusz, who lives in Reeth, North Yorkshire<\/a>. He has based his model on the model railway 00 gauge; a model person at this scale is 22mm tall.<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m absolutely horrified,\u201d he said of the proposed windfarm, which would power 81,000 homes and constitutes a key part of the Labour government\u2019s renewable energy targets and planning revolution. \u201cI\u2019ve been on walks where you can have a 360-degree view with nothing man-made and it brings a profound depth of relaxation I\u2019ve never experienced before. There are so few places in Britain where you can connect to the natural world in its own state.\u201d<\/p>\n chart<\/a><\/p>\n The battle over Hope Moor is set to be repeated across the country as the government\u2019s unprecedented drive to generate 95% of electricity from low-carbon sources by 2030 clashes with local people\u2019s fears for wildlife, landscape and countryside.<\/p>\n This week, the UK\u2019s energy secretary, Ed Miliband, announced contracts<\/a> for 157 new solar farms, 28 new onshore windfarms, eight offshore windfarms and three tidal projects. Together with other offshore windfarms announced in January, they will generate enough clean power to supply 16m homes.<\/p>\n Labour lifted the \u201cban\u201d on onshore windfarms<\/a> in 2024. Among the onshore projects approved this week is Imerys in Cornwall \u2013 the largest onshore windfarm in England for a decade at 20MW. But that will be dwarfed by 100MW Hope Moor.<\/p>\n In the pretty village of Barningham, County Durham, on the other side of Hope Moor, rebellion is coalescing around a coffee table book produced by Sir Anthony Milbank, the bird-loving former owner of one of two large moorland estates where the windfarm is proposed.<\/p>\n The book describes the bountiful wildlife \u2013 from breeding curlew and nightjars to rare black grouse and hen harriers \u2013 found on the moor and was published in tribute to Sir Anthony, who died in 2016. His son, Sir Edward Milbank, is one of the two landowners who will profit from the windfarm planned by Fred. Olsen Renewables<\/a>.<\/p>\n Suzy and Tim Wilson moved from Warwickshire three years ago, convinced that Barningham, where Suzy grew up, and its surrounding moorland wildlife was in safe hands next to the national park and the North Pennines National Landscape<\/a>.<\/p>\n Campaigner Suzy Wilson. Photograph: Gary Calton\/The Guardian<\/p>\n \u201cWe live here because of this \u2013 it\u2019s priceless. It\u2019s paradise. It\u2019s heaven,\u201d said Suzy Wilson on a walk across the moor, where we saw rare black grouse and heard endangered curlew calling. \u201cWe want to share it with people. There\u2019s a carpet of sphagnum moss. In the spring, it\u2019s heaven \u2013 all the curlew and oystercatchers, and the grouse are doing their little dance.\u201d<\/p>\n