Carmarthenshire Residents Action Group (CRAiG Sir Gâr) has condemned the proposed 162 MW Glyn Cothi Wind Farm as an affront to local democracy. The proposals follow plans for an earlier 48 MW scheme on Llanllwni mountain, turned down over a decade ago in the face of huge local opposition.
Glyn Cothi joins a series of other major wind, solar and pylon projects all slated for the rural county. With pylons and access roads carving their way through Carmarthenshire’s scenic and historic valleys.
The Brechfa forest development will likely mean residents are stripped of their rights to access forestry land near the wind infrastructure. Extensive road and bridge building will also be necessary to gain access for the giant turbines in this remote rural location. Thousands of tonnes of concrete and steel will be needed to build their foundations. This will indelibly scar the landscape, wreck communities and sound the death knell for many tourism businesses. All while energy bills soar to pay for the cost of the infrastructure extracting the power and destroying the Welsh countryside.
Havard Hughes, Spokesman for CRAiG Sir Gâr commented:
These proposals for Glyn Cothi were utterly predictable when the Welsh Government imposed an industrial wind zone on a third of Carmarthenshire in Future Wales 2040. This monstrous scheme will see turbines hundreds of feet high with aircraft warning lights blazing day and night. The dark skies of the Brechfa Forest and Cothi Valley will be gone forever, replaced by a permanent NetZero glow.
Glyn Cothi is the culmination of a huge failure by Carmarthenshire County Council to protect the Cothi Valley. Residents warned in April 2023 that the Ann Davies Local Development Plan, which scrapped the Cothi Valley’s Special Landscape Area status would leave it ripe for industrialisation.
Not content with investing the County Council’s pension pot in the Bute Energy Pylon scheme, Carmarthenshire has stripped communities of the 18 Special Landscape Areas which would have helped fight this exploitation. It’s no wonder that one of the largest electricity sub stations in the UK is being planned for Llandyfaelog. It’s open season for turbines and pylons in an area larger than the width of Greater London.
The Glyn Cothi windfarm is three times the size of the previous Llanllwni proposal. There needs to be a moratorium on piecemeal renewables development. The culminative effect of the Glyn Cothi, Bute Energy and Galileo schemes, to name but three, needs to be viewed in the round. Otherwise, we risk our garden county is destroyed by a web of concrete and steel. With a third of Carmarthenshire earmarked for industrial wind there will be turbines on every hill, panels on every field and pylons in every valley in North Carmarthenshire. Carmarthenshire is becoming the wild west of renewables and the very soul of our county is at risk