Wednesday 24 August 2011

Localism? Devolution of power? You gotta be joking!

If one googles "wind farm plans blocked" a number of examples can be found where local authorities have not agreed to wind farm planning proposals following objections received from the public. It would appear that the European Union are not the happiest of bunnies over such antics. Once again courtesy of The Albion Alliance Presents comes notification of a Study, published today, on "permitting procedures for energy infrastructure projects in the EU: evaluation and legal recommendations". 

It is noted that copyright in these studies is held by the European Union. Persons wishing to use the contents of these studies (in whole or in part) for purposes other than their personal use are invited to submit a written request. Having published the entire contents of the study on the internet I fail to see how copyright could be infringed - but I digress - and in any event it can be accessed by clicking the link for the 2011 pdf

Whilst noting the disclaimer issued by the European Commission - which past events has shown to be meaningless in that envariably suggestions are adopted - in the first paragraph of the Management Summary there appears what I believe to be a most telling statement:
"The European Commission (EC) is actively driving the development of energy infrastructure in EU Member States. However, projects given priority status under the Trans-European Energy Networks (TEN-E) guidelines frequently suffer delays. In most cases, these delays occur during the permitting procedure in the country in question. According to project developers in Member States, the main reasons are strong opposition to projects from stakeholders and complex national permitting procedures. Therefore, if the goals of the EU's 2020 scenario are to be met, stakeholder opposition to prioritised projects needs to be mitigated and the effectiveness of permitting procedures improved."(Emphasis mine)
That should bring a whole new meaning to the Cameroon idea of 'localism' and 'devolution of power'!

Once again, just saying...........

4 comments:

James Higham said...

stakeholder opposition to prioritised projects needs to be mitigated

By dropping "peaceful purposes" on them?

cosmic said...

A stakeholder is a third party holding stakes pending the result of a wager. It seems to have been hijacked to be part of verbose and ridiculous management gobbledygook.

If you write the quote from the Management Summary in plain English it means that anyone who objects to these schemes should be ignored or bullied into acceptance and national planning laws done away with.

kenomeat said...

I've just copied a section of your piece onto Facebook. I don't have many contacts myself but I'm hoping that it gets copied by some readers and the word spreads. Can I suggest that we make full use of Facebook to publicise the evils of the EU. Every little helps.
By the way, I've included the sentence containing the words "...the effectiveness of permitting procedures improved." Chilling words indeed.

WitteringsfromWitney said...

JH: Who knows.......?

c: Totally agree!

k: Whilst registered on Facebook, I don't actually participate myself - rather busy with the blog and my constitution thingy at the moment.

However many thanks for what you have done - you never know who might pick it up.....

And yes, chilling words indeed!