Within days of becoming the Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, Ed Miliband, the former Labour Leader, announced an immediate end to the de facto ban on new onshore wind farms in the United Kingdom that had been in place since 2015. This got me thinking (usually a dangerous occurrence I know), it is now conceivable that the University could build a wind farm on Campus East and become genuinely more sustainable in the future.
This may seem like a bit of a wishy-washy proposition but hear me out. Since everyone’s favourite consumer of bacon sandwiches has lifted restrictions put in place under David Cameron’s post-coalition government in 2015 (which made it virtually impossible for new onshore wind farms to be constructed), this lifts significant bureaucratic hurdles for the University to achieve energy security and sustainability. Recently, the Campus East Energy Centre (which runs on natural gas) was constructed to the side of Constantine College and was criticised for running on fossil fuels by ex-YUSU President Pierrick Roger. Clearly, the University intends to have its own energy supplies in the near future.
As a member of Constantine College and living there on East in 2021/22, it became very obvious to me that the fields on which Campus East is constructed are extremely exposed and it did not take much for significant winds to occur (strong enough to make walking through campus very difficult). Furthermore, the land between Constantine and the Sports Village is currently marshy and would be difficult to expand Constantine or build new buildings on it. I would therefore recommend that if the University were to build anything there, it should be a small wind farm. Given the environment in Heslington East, the electric output of a wind farm should be relatively consistent and this could go a big way in not only ensuring the University is producing clean energy, but because it is energy that they’re producing that could bring down costs too.
For me it is a win/win, but alas I am unsure of the practicalities. I mentioned the land between the Sports Village and Constantine was marshy, could that be impractical for the construction of a wind farm? Unfortunately, my GCSE Geography and Combined Sciences knowledge does not stretch this far. Regardless, with the removal of restrictions put in place by the new Labour government, the University should be exploring options to improve its energy security and ensure it can genuinely commit to transitioning to clean energy.