England’s tallest wind turbine prepares to rise against the odds

Renewable project on edge of Bristol has overcome planning hurdles and will empower local housing estate

A muddy, forgotten patch of land, sandwiched between a gas power station and a car breakage plant, will be home to England’s tallest wind turbine by the end of next week.

The turbine, which will stand 150 meters tall from its base to the tip of its blade, is owned by a group of residents from nearby Lawrence Weston, a deprived housing estate on the fringes of Bristol, and some of the income it generates will be used to help the local community.

Mark Pepper, who founded Ambition Lawrence Weston to regenerate the estate, where he has lived his entire life, says it is a relief to see construction finally begin after seven years of fundraising, meetings, and complying with planning requirements introduced by the former prime minister, David Cameron, which have made new onshore windfarms a rarity in England.

“It is a massive achievement that we’ve managed to pull off as an impoverished community,” he says in the estate’s community centre, which is the base for the group and less than five miles from the turbine. “I’m hoping it will give confidence to people that they can achieve things, confidence that they’ve got a better, brighter future and a stronger connection with the climate emergency.”

The turbine, which has a maximum capacity of 4.2MW, is expected to start selling energy to the grid from May and generate upwards of £100,000 a year for Lawrence Weston. Pepper says the desperately needed revenue will go into helping residents hit by the energy crisis, including draught-proofing homes, providing energy-saving devices like slow cookers, and boosting emergency funds.

“People on pre-paid meters are self-disconnecting. Today I’ve just signed 12 applications for £100 each to pay for people’s emergency credit as they’ve run out. They are on brink of having no heating or power,” says Pepper. “There are single parents, working families, and retired people – it’s a real mix.”

Engineers from Ambition Community Energy, which will be managing the turbine on behalf of Ambition Lawrence Weston, are on-site to see a 121m crane assemble the four remaining sections of the turbine tower, which weigh 80 tonnes each. The base of the tower is secured on 22m deep concrete and steel reinforced foundations, which will anchor the turbine in the fiercest of storms.

“There is a massive downforce [from the foundations] to make sure this thing doesn’t take off,” explains Charles Gamble, the community interest company’s electrical engineer, as he walks around the perimeter of the site. “In some freak storm, you’d have this enormous lever trying to push the entire turbine over but it won’t because it’s engineered by smart people.”

Gamble says turbines like this should be going up across the country. “This country is blessed with so much wind. We should have turbines everywhere. We’re all paying this turbine a lot of attention but if this was Denmark or Germany, it would be a daily experience.”

Although there is a growing interest in similar grassroots energy schemes and the government is consulting on making it easier to build onshore build on-shore wind turbines, local groups find it difficult to access funding. There is no ringfenced funding for community energy projects and government subsidies are only available to commercial-scale windfarms, producing more than 5MW. “It should have been a hell of a lot easier to build this turbine,” says Pepper.

However, other communities in the region may soon get the chance to follow Lawrence Weston. David Tudgey, the project’s development manager, who took the turbine through planning and funding rounds, has managed to secure new funding from the region’s Labour metro mayor, Dan Norris, to help local groups build their own turbines. “We’ve got £1.5m to develop 10 more turbines – it’s an incredibly exciting project, which will potentially benefit lots of communities across the region,” he says.

It is thought to be the first regionally funded community energy scheme in the country. “The West of England is going to become a beacon as to how communities can be genuinely levelled up through a just energy transition,” says Tudgey. “That is what we are leading on in the West Country.”

COVER PHOTO: wo existing wind turbines in the background of the Lawrence Weston construction site where a 150m turbine is about to be erected. Photograph: Lizzie Goldsack