Rethink launches at Smallholding & Countryside Festival

A new organisation aimed at promoting offshore renewable energy projects and community schemes instead of large-scale onshore developments has been launched in Brecon and Radnorshire.

“RE-think: Don’t Break the Heart of Wales” opened for business this weekend with a stand at the Smallholding and Countryside Festival at the Royal Welsh Showground in Llanelwedd. 

The not-for-profit group was set up in response to plans by Bute Energy Ltd to build up to 20 renewable energy parks across Wales, along with associated infrastructure.  Its proposed flagship project, Nant Mithil Energy Park in Radnor Forest, would include 36 turbines each 220 metres tall, plus a new electricity substation linked via an overhead power line to the grid in Carmarthenshire 60 miles away.  Solar arrays and battery storage facilities may also feature in the plans.

RE-think’s members and supporters believe that developments such as Nant Mithil are unnecessary because floating offshore wind projects being planned in the Celtic Sea will provide all the power that Wales needs to meet its renewable energy targets, as well as exporting to England and elsewhere.  The group also supports small renewable energy projects built near to the communities who use them. 

The Chair of RE-think Jenny Chryss said: “It’s taken a supreme effort by the whole team to get to where we are so quickly, but we had to act fast.  Nant Mithil is just one planned energy park; if it gets the go-ahead there will be many more to follow. 

“These developments and the associated pylons and other infrastructure would destroy landscapes and livelihoods, along with the environment and the ecology that surrounds them.  Tourists who come for the beauty of the area would no longer be drawn here if it was covered in turbines and pylons.  People are frantic with worry; it’s just not needed and it has to be stopped.”