Crunch time approaches for Bute Energy’s controversial projects

Martin Shipton

A controversial renewable energy company that has spent millions since 2018 developing projects in Wales without earning a penny expects to hear within weeks whether planning permission has been granted for its first wind farm.

Bute Energy’s plans have been hit by delays in the planning system, but managing director Stuart George is confident the schemes will be approved because, he says, they align with Welsh Government policy.

The firm has, however, had a fraught relationship with its opponents, who accuse it of seeking to desecrate rural Wales’ precious landscape.

Pylons

Green Gen Cymru, which has the same Scotland-based ownership but for legal purposes is now run as a separate entity, has parallel plans to run a network of pylons across mid Wales.

Mr George is one of the three co-founders of Bute Energy, with a background in the property business and no previous experience of the renewable energy industry. Asked why he and his Edinburgh-based colleagues should be taken seriously, he said: “I agree that the industries are different, but there are many similarities to the development of property assets and the development of renewable energy assets. We felt we had experience and expertise in the development of property assets that we felt could lend themselves to renewables.

“We also felt that this theme of sustainability and climate change was becoming more and more pertinent in our lives, and we wanted to deploy our input and resource to something we felt was a societal challenge. We felt that climate change was that.

“We were newcomers to the industry – we don’t hide away from that. But it’s important to remember that the time we came in, in 2017/18 was a very challenging time for renewable energy. The subsidy arrangement that the UK Government had in place had just been removed, and pretty much everyone in the industry that had experience and we spoke to said there was unlikely to be a business case for onshore wind or renewable energy in the future, without subsidy.

“We fundamentally didn’t think that would be the case, because in the UK context wind energy is the cheapest form of electricity, and we felt that if we are to overcome the issues of sustainability and climate change, and we’re to deliver a net zero system, the cheapest form of energy must have a place. So I think our fresh perspective on the industry was actually of benefit to us.

“What we’ve done is build up the foundations of a business as we’ve brought in extremely strong track record and experience from outside in – and I’m very proud of the team we’ve assembled, who have decades and GigaWatts-worth of experience in delivering the type of infrastructure that we’re proposing to.”

Revenue

Asked how it had been possible to keep the business going in the development stage for so long without a penny in revenue, Mr George said: “When we first set it up there were just the few of us – we were venture creating. We then built up a relatively enviable portfolio, with some land agreements in place, but we were outgrowing our ability to finance ourselves forward.

“What we did was seek external investment into the business, and we partnered with a globally renowned infrastructure investor called CIP [Copenhagen Infrastructure Partners] in 2022. They enabled us to build up the business to what you see today, with the headcount that you have, who are ultimately tasked with delivering the portfolio through the planning system. So you’re right – we’ve had no revenue to date and we don’t plan on having any revenue for the next couple of years because we’re still pre-construction on all of our portfolio. But development is a long game and renewable infrastructure development is a very long game. So for us it’s going to take six or seven years, and for others it can take much, much longer.”

Mr George confirmed there had been delays in the planning system: “What has happened recently is there’s been various pieces of communication from the planning inspectorate of the Welsh Government to say these delays are now formalised and in place, and developers should expect at least a six-month delay. This is definitely a concern.

“I think it’s a concern in the delivery of net zero targets, fundamentally. We’re hopeful that some solutions may come out of it, and the UK Government is talking about the reform of planning policy and the acceleration of planning policy as it pertains to renewable energy. We’re very supportive of that and we’re very supportive of helping the Welsh Government where we can to help solve this problem, which is effectively around resource availability.”

Intimidated

We asked Mr George about a letter he sent to general election candidates in Wales in which he claimed that Bute Energy staff members had been intimidated by opponents of the company’s schemes, and even that their vehicles had been interfered with in a way that could have caused physical harm to those travelling in them. The group Re-think was named in the letter, members of which had been angered at the implication that they may have incited criminal activity.

Asked whether he regretted sending the letter, Mr George said: “My primary concern when I wrote the communication to parliamentary candidates and other individuals was the health and safety and well-being of my team. What I’d observed from members of my team who were in the field undertaking necessary and lawful survey activity was a worrisome trend in the level of behaviour towards our staff.

“I became concerned that it was perhaps breaching a level of acceptability. There were some worrying incidents in their own right, but there was also some worrisome communication to suggest that something else may happen in the future. I felt compelled to write in the way that I did to those candidates. The evidence we saw was that some of the [opposition] groups had involvement in some of the verbal activity. We were by no means meaning to point a finger at some of the specific incidents that happened with regard to tampering with our team’s vehicles as part of that.

“We have had more than one incident of tampering with vehicles. Two of our team have had their wheel nuts tampered with, either at a home location or a business location, which is obviously very serious. Thankfully they were identified before any harm was done.”

‘Sell on’

According to Re-think, an FoI response from the Wales Pension Partnership, which handles public sector pension investments, implied that Bute Energy has no intention of developing wind farms itself, but will “sell on” projects to other developers if planning permission is granted. Mr George denied this, stating: “No – not at all. Our intention has always been and certainly is as we sit today to take our projects through construction and deliver them into operation and beyond. That is categorically our interest. We would like to be there all the way from the first conversation with a landowner all the way through to the operation of the wind farm.”

Asked how he responded to the allegation made by opponents that Bute Energy plans to destroy Wales’ precious landscapes, Mr George said: “We look to openly consult and engage with members of the community for any project location, and I think we go over and above the minimum standard in that regard. What I would say is that it’s for the planning process and the planning system to determine the acceptability or not of our projects or anyone else’s developments.

“I think what we’re doing as a business is responding to ambitious government targets to decarbonise the energy system and achieve net zero by 2030 or 2035, depending on the jurisdiction you look at. We listen to the public, we make modifications to our planning applications, as I think is demonstrated and will be on public record. We always look to mitigate impacts where possible. But moreover we’re in a climate emergency and I think society is calling for us to make some trade-offs to enable us to achieve the necessary goals.”

Mr George said the issue of whether electricity should be routed underground rather than by pylons was now a matter for Green Gen Cymru, although there were clearly cost implications.

Asked to clarify whether he thought that people who opposed the plans should just “suck up” the negative impacts on Wales’ landscape, he said: “I wouldn’t use that terminology, but I would encourage communities and individuals to take an active participation in consultation and engagement with the project, to make any concerns that they have known to the project through feedback that will then be built into the overall process.”

Targets

Asked whether Bute Energy had any targets in terms of the profits it sought to make, Mr George said: “We’re here for the long term. Our goal is to get those projects into operation and then to take the revenue that comes at that time – and that for us is a very long-term horizon. We aren’t looking for a moment, or anything of that nature. It’s more of an achievement of long-term benefit for both ourselves and the two investors we have in the business.”

Asked how many jobs he thought the projects would create, Mr George said in the construction phase about 2,000 jobs would be created in the next two to three years, with as many as possible coming from Wales. After the construction phase, the numbers employed to operate and maintain the wind farms would be between 100 and 200 people.

When it was put to Mr George that there had been a lot of hype from politicians about the creation of numerous “green” jobs, and that 100-200 roles did not sound like a game-changing number, he said: “That’s just through the lens of a certain amount of our projects being delivered in a certain period of time. I think the skills that that workforce will obtain and gain through that process , both through training and the actual delivery of that portfolio, will leave them in an extremely good position for future projects that are coming forward.

“We support offshore wind, but it’s further out into the future that technology is likely to come forward. We see our role in the creation of the supply chain for Wales as being an important bridging mechanism to offshore wind, because you will need the same individuals who will ultimately go on to build and deliver some of the offshore wind projects with Celtic Sea and otherwise. We see our relationship with that as a really strong enabler of that workforce, because our projects can be delivered this decade and not beyond that. So we can give them tangible projects to be involved with. I’d also say there are a number of other developers operating both within Wales and across the UK where those skills can be redeployed into the delivery of those projects.”

Scottish company

When it was put to Mr George that he and his colleagues were just a bunch of Scots coming down to Wales and pretending to be an indigenous Welsh company, when in fact it’s a Scottish company, he said: “I don’t think I’ve ever pretended to be Welsh. I don’t think we’ve ever hidden our nationality from anyone. When we built the business to a certain scale, we recognised that our entire portfolio and our business activity was here, and was based in Wales. So what we did was commit to investing into Wales, taking office space and putting our headquarters here and investing in building out the team as much as we possibly could in Wales. I have incredibly enjoyed my time in Wales. Walers is effectively my second home and I’ve built a huge network of friendships and relationships down in Wales – but that isn’t me pretending to be Welsh. I think we just wanted to put as much of our business investment into Wales as we possibly could.”

Asked when he though the crunch would come for Bute’s project, and what chance he thought it would proceed in the way he’d like it to, Mr George said: “We have a decision that’s imminent, and that’s in respect to our Twyn Hywel energy park in Caerphilly. We anticipate that decision in late September, and that it will go in our favour. I’m very proud of the work the team have done there, both in terms of the technical aspects of that project, and also in terms of our wider engagement with the community. Then we’ll be moving as quickly as we can to be construction ready, hopefully commencing construction in April 2025.

“We then have a series of other projects – 10 in total – that are currently working their way through various stages of the planning system. We have three or four additional projects that are likely to move themselves to final planning application submission in 2024. What we do now anticip[ate is that they will experience a delay from the period of submission to acceptance, which is usually six weeks and is now likely to be six months. They hopefully should be determined at the tail end of 2025 and the start of 2026. We will keep working hard to get our projects through in as positive a timeline as we can.”

Approval

He said he was optimistic that Twyn Hywel would be approved because “we’re responding to Welsh Government policy – it sits within one of the pre-assessed areas in the Future Wales 2040 policy document.”

He added: “We feel that we’ve consulted and engaged well with the community and had a relatively positive response there. We also feel we’ve had a positive response and dialogue with the statutory consultees, and have made the necessary changes that we feel should and could have been made to render that project consentable.”

Asked how he would react if the decision went against Bute, Mr George said: “There’s no doubt we would be disappointed, but we have a portfolio that is not going to be determined by any one project within it. What we’d quickly look to do was tackle as many learnings as we could, and we’d look to take those learnings forward into the future projects and make any amendments that we felt necessary to overcome it.”

He believes it will become clear “within 24 to 36 months” whether the overall project will be able to progress: “If we get positive consents, we can build our entire portfolio prior to 2030,” he said. “So we can be a very meaningful part of both Wales’ and the UK’s delivery of net zero targets prior to that date. I would put our chances of success as relatively high.”

Learning

Asked whether he regretted anything about the way the company had behaved in developing its projects, Mr George said: “I think we are constantly learning. We started out as a small business and I am very conscious that not everything I have suggested or done has been right, and what we as a business have done has been right.

But we pride ourselves on learning from our mistakes. I think that as a small business we weren’t particularly external in our engagement – we weren’t particularly well-known, and with that we kind of hadn’t prepared the ground appropriately for that. Later we sought to forge better relationships with the communities we were working within. So it’s evolutionary and a constant learning journey. We’re constantly looking to improve, we’re constantly looking to listen to feedback on how we can do things better and how we can do things differently.”

Asked to comment on the concerns of some landowners, who have complained about the supposedly highhanded behaviour of Bute employees who appeared to threaten landowners with the compulsory purchase of their land, and whether the problems were caused by a corporate approach or by individuals,

Mr George said: “If you mean did the decision come from management, yes it did. I think it was done from the correct place. What we wanted to do in the incidents you refer to was effectively be there and show up in person, such that we could have direct conversations with landowners about what was potentially coming forward, and listen to their early concerns and begin to create relationships with those landowners. I think the unfortunate reality with some of that is that at times, when individuals didn’t want to have those conversations – and by individuals I mean the landowners who received the communications – they didn’t want people to turn up to have the conversation, and so ultimately their perspective on it was perhaps that it was overly enthusiastic for us to turn up for such conversations,

There is some regret in that for me. I think we sought to improve and change our approach in places. But really it came from a good place – that we want to do things differently to how others may have done it in the past,that we turn up to have those personal conversations with landowners, because we understand that it can be big news when you receive a communication of that nature, and we wanted to be there to listen to those concerns.”