Welsh renewables firm Bute Energy is seeking planners’ signoff of its Twyn Hywel Energy Park, a development of national significance, near Pontypridd.
The Twyn Hywel park will include up to 14 wind turbines generating 92.4MW of electricity, enough to power the equivalent of 81,000 households a year, and furthering the Welsh government’s target of 100% renewable electricity by 2035.
Bute says Twyn Hywel has potential to displace 5.7 million tonnes of carbon dioxide every year, the equivalent to taking all cars off the roads of the Caerphilly county borough.
Over its 45-year operational life, the project will also deliver benefits to the local community, in the form of an annual community benefit Fund of nearly £700,000. Uniquely among such funds elsewhere, Bute says Twyn Hywel’s pot will be inflation-proofed with a link to the Consumer Price Index.
Local groups, charities and services with funding to sustain their work, create new innovative projects that benefit local people and help organisations combine their expertise with others to build large scale multi-year legacy projects to benefit local communities.
Planners will need to ponder the park’s effects on rights of way over Eglwysilan Common. Bute promises access will be maintained. It pledges to enhancing visiting opportunities to local features such as the Senghenydd Dyke. Schoolchildren will still be able to visit the site, in furtherance of delivery of Wales’s national curriculum.
Hedgerow planting and the restoration of degraded bogs will yield a 20% improvement in the area’s biodiversity, the developers say.
The project’s manager Matthew Haughton said the total & location of turbines had been scaled back after representation from local communities.
“As a nation we’re in a climate emergency, and a cost-of-living crisis”, Haughton added.
“Our supply of energy is threatened by world events. Yet there is endless potential in Wales – particularly from the wind that blows across our hills and mountains. Bute Energy is making the Welsh weather work for Wales: acting now to help deliver clean, green energy to our homes and businesses.”
