As I travel across Carmarthenshire, from farm kitchens in the Tywi Valley to small business workshops in Llanelli, one clear message comes up time and time again: hard-working local families are being pushed to the brink by sky-high energy bills, while our local grid is failing us when we need it most.
A Personal Reflection on Cardiff Bay’s Disconnect
Every week in Cardiff Bay, I sit in committee rooms listening to politicians talk as if carpet-bombing our irreplaceable Welsh countryside with massive wind turbines and sprawling solar arrays is an unquestionable moral crusade. But when you look past the rhetoric and face basic engineering realities, a very different picture emerges.
The truth is that our energy policy is currently being dictated by political dogma rather than practical common sense. While politicians boast about distant targets, local people across Sir Gaerfyrddin are paying first-world energy prices for a third-world grid.
The Hidden Costs and Ecological Realities
The irony of current eco-campaigning is that sprawling, land-intensive renewable developments bring severe environmental trade-offs that are routinely brushed under the carpet. Look at what happened recently in the Netherlands: 20 massive wind turbines were ordered to halt daytime operations after a protected white-tailed eagle was struck and killed by a rotating blade. When we industrialise our open spaces, nature pays the price.
A Grid in Paralysis: Spending Millions NOT to Produce Power
Even more crippling to Carmarthenshire’s economic future is the structural paralysis of our national electricity grid.
Our power network was engineered decades ago to transport reliable, steady electricity from central power stations directly to homes and businesses. Today, uncoordinated surges of weather-dependent wind and solar generation flood local transmission lines, causing severe capacity overloads. Because the grid cannot handle these sudden spikes, National Grid paid over £1.4 billion last year in “curtailment fees”, paying renewable developers to turn off their generators, while simultaneously paying fossil fuel plants elsewhere to fire up and maintain supply.
Who pays for this scandalous dysfunction? You do. Every single penny of these balancing costs is tacked onto consumer electricity bills, hurting families, pensioners, and small businesses across Carmarthenshire.
Stifling Local Enterprise and Rural Development
What makes this situation intolerable is the sheer hypocrisy faced by local enterprises. When smallholders, farmers, and community facilities in our county spend thousands on rooftop solar or micro-generation, they are told by grid operators that they cannot connect for years, sometimes over a decade, due to a complete lack of local sub-station capacity.
We are caught in the worst of both worlds: uncoordinated, massive industrial developments overwhelming the countryside, while genuine local enterprise is blocked at every turn.
And what happens on those calm, dark winter days when the wind stops blowing and solar drops to zero? Wales is forced to rely on expensive imported gas and subsea interconnectors from abroad just to keep the lights on and prevent catastrophic blackouts.
Reform UK Wales Manifesto: Our Common-Sense Energy Plan
Reform UK is committed to restoring engineering sanity and economic fairness to Welsh energy policy:
Moratorium on Industrial Countryside Renewables: Ban new large-scale onshore wind and ground-mounted solar projects on productive agricultural land using ministerial call-in powers, protecting Carmarthenshire’s food security and rural landscape.
Mandatory Undergrounding of Power Lines: Stop the erection of invasive overhead high-voltage pylons across rural communities, enforcing a clear presumption in favour of underground cabling.
Scrap Green Levies & Net-Zero Mandates: Strip away artificial net-zero subsidies, climate charges, and heat pump mandates that inflate household bills and penalise rural home heating.
All-In on Reliable Baseload Power: Act as an active enabler for nuclear energy, including Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) at sites like Wylfa and Trawsfynydd, alongside domestic gas, delivering guaranteed 24/7 power regardless of weather.
Abolish NRW Bureaucracy: Replace Natural Resources Wales with a streamlined, independent regulator focused on practical environmental stewardship rather than ideological red tape.
My Commitment as Your Member of the Senedd
An energy policy’s primary duty is simple: to deliver cheap, secure, and reliable power to our people and businesses. In the Senedd, I will continue standing up for Carmarthenshire’s farmers, families, and high streets, fighting for engineering reality over political dogma.
Gareth Beer MS
Reform UK Senedd Member for Carmarthenshire / Aelod o’r Senedd dros Sir Gaerfyrddin
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