UK Edition
Adele's eco warrior husband hits out at South Downs wind farm 'scars'
As the founder of an award winning company selling eco-friendly bottled water, Simon Konecki no doubt has impeccable green credentials.
But while the Old Etonian who is married to singer Adele would normally enthusiastically support building Britain’s biggest offshore wind farm, the discovery that it has left a “10-year” blot on a valley in his home county has proven too much for him to bear.
Simon Konecki, an American banker turned businessman, has used YouTube to post a two-and-half minute “mini-documentary” complaining that power cable trenches dug along the South Downs National Park have “scarred” West Sussex.
The clip made by his company, Life Water, features drone footage showing eight mile long and 40ft wide trenches, much of it through the Adur Valley.
The cables come from the Rampion wind farm where 116 turbines built in the English Channel will provide 347,000 homes with energy from next year.
However, E.ON, which built the £1.3 billion plant, and the South Down National Parks Authority have complained of inaccuracies in the video insisting that the damage is temporary.
And, Caroline Lucas, joint leader of the Green Party and Brighton Pavilion MP, has said Konecki should have highlighted other threats to the South Downs. The criticism will prove particularly embarrassing as the businessman lived in Brighton but now shares a £4 million mansion near East Grinstead, West Sussex, with his singer wife.
The wind farm was given the go-ahead by the government in 2014. Because E.ON had to lay 90 miles of cabling it was required to pay £242,500 to the park authority “in mitigation”, and £116,000 to fund 10 years of monitoring to ensure the countryside and wildlife recovers.
The Life Water video quotes a park authority officer saying E.ON has 10 years to get the park back to its original state, adding that it would have been too time consuming to put turf back on the entire scarred landscape.
But a park authority spokeswoman said: “We are disappointed that our comments have been taken out of context. It’s important that the route is restored to the highest possible standard. However, as the film-maker was aware, most of the route is farmland which will quickly return to pasture or crops when the soil is completely returned next year.
“A short section of cable passed through rare chalk grassland. Here we made sure the turf was lifted and replaced as soon as work was completed. Reestablishment of the chalk grassland will take time so we have a ten-year monitoring and survey programme in place to make sure that the habitat returns, as far as possible, to its previous condition.”
An E.ON spokesman said: “This film contains a number of inaccurate statements about Rampion, in particular leaving the impression that no further reinstatement work on the onshore cable route is to be carried out.
“It is worth pointing out that construction on the wind farm is still going on and the visual impact on the South Downs will be entirely temporary.”
He added that they had worked with the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew to capture seeds from the original plants to be replanted on the Downs.
Caroline Lucas said: “Like any major project there has been some disturbance, and I definitely believe the scar on the Downs should be re-turfed as soon as possible.
“But let's not throw the baby out with the bathwater here by buying into the idea that offshore wind is anything but a technology that's working effectively, and set to become the backbone of British energy. The real threats to the South Downs are drilling of oil and gas - and to focus attacks on clean energy really does miss the mark."
Louis Berry, executive producer at Life Water TV, said neither Konecki nor his company Life Water were anti-wind farms, adding: “We set out to find out more about Rampion and we felt that what we found needed to be shared. We are very supportive of wind farms including Rampion, but it doesn’t mean that the current system is above criticism.”