North Cornwall
North Cornwall has 10 MW of clean power (almost all solar) approved and still not built: enough to supply a year's electricity to 4,200 homes. When the wires are too full to carry the power, Britain pays wind farms to switch off instead. No wind farm here is paid that way — almost all of it goes to wind farms in Scotland. That cost is shared across every bill in Britain, so households here pay for it too: about £92 a year per household, £4.0m across the constituency's 43,136 homes. There is also 51 MW of wind running here on the local network. If that gets switched off, no national record shows it.
Ranks 229 of 650 for clean power approved and not built.
What is stuck, and why
| Project and developer | Tech | Size | Why it is stuck |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tregath Business Park Station Road - Geothermal DevelopmentGeothermal Engineering Limited | Geothermal | 49 MW | Refused by Cornwall Council in 2025Who can move it: Cornwall Council · planning ref PA23/10067 |
| Higher Witheven SolarDowning Renewables | Solar | 42 MW15,000 homes | Approved less than a year ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref PA23/04306 |
| Bears Down Wind FarmClean Earth Energy Limited | Onshore wind | 22 MW20,000 homes | Waiting 2.5 years for a planning decisionWho can move it: Cornwall Council · planning ref PA23/10324 |
| Cold Northcott Windfarm RepoweringRMA Environmental Limited | Onshore wind | 22 MW19,000 homes | Waiting 2.7 years for a planning decisionWho can move it: Cornwall Council · planning ref PA23/02727 |
| St Columb Major - Battery Energy Storage FacilityAldustria Energy Storage | Battery | 5 MW | Approved a year ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref PA25/02638 |
| Lower Tregeen FarmPowerquinn | Solar | 5 MW1,800 homes | Approved 10 years ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref PA15/11004 |
| Trekenning Farm - Battery Storage Facility & Co-OpWessex Strategic | Battery | 5 MW | Approved less than a year ago — nothing has happened sinceWho can move it: the developer and the network company · planning ref PA22/08840 |
Plus 5 smaller projects — see the full seat page.
Compared with its neighbours
| Constituency | Approved, not built | Running | Paid to switch off |
|---|---|---|---|
| North Cornwall | 10 MW | 197 MW | not visible |
| St Austell and Newquay | 11 MW | 96 MW | not visible |
| South East Cornwall | 1.9 MW | 119 MW | not visible |
| Torridge and Tavistock | 70 MW | 188 MW | not visible |
Torridge and Tavistock next door has 70 MW waiting, more than North Cornwall's 10 MW.
The rest of the briefing
- Every approval each project still needs, and which of them the public can see
- What building them would mean here — community payments, business rates and construction work
- Drafted parliamentary questions and letters, filled in with this seat's figures
- 3 story angles for local reporting
- A two-page PDF, and a newsroom edition with the references and who to call
Everything above needs no account, and neither does the full seat page, the method or this constituency's raw data. The account covers the packaged briefing and its PDF, and nothing else.