Representation by Peter Duncan Wood
- Date submitted
- 6 January 2023
- Submitted by
- Members of the public/businesses
The "Statement of needs" document within the DCO documents is incomplete. Their are two things it fails to consider. The first failure is that the document ignores the reduction in UK food security that will be inevitable should this development progress. The desire for power generation from renewable sources is understood. However, the "Statement of needs" ignores the over-arching need for food production. Humanity cannot exist without food. It can exist without electricity and has done so for many millenia. The second failure is that the document assumes that "green-field" development of such facilities is the only way to progress. Whilst comparisons are made with other methods of generating power such as nuclear, gas and fuel cells, there is no comparison with solar installations on "brown-field" and other sites which would result in little or no loss of the existing utility. By inference, the "Statement of needs" dismisses sites such as supermarket car parks or the roof of Heathrow T5 because they are too small to make them competitive with nuclear. But the costs for this development do not include the loss of food production and the economic, security and environmental costs that importing replacement products would incur.