By Shane Oxer — Campaigner for fairer and affordable energy
There are some arguments about energy and planning that can be conducted from behind a desk. Walshaw Moor is not one of them.To understand what is being proposed here, you need to walk the land.You need to leave the road, climb through the bracken and rough grass, feel the ground change beneath your boots and watch the landscape open in front of you. You need to see the reservoirs lying below the hills, the stone walls disappearing into the distance and the enormous sweep of open moorland stretching towards Withins Height and Top Withens.
I did exactly that.And after walking across this landscape, I came away more convinced than ever that the debate over Calderdale Energy Park cannot simply be reduced to megawatts, turbine numbers and government renewable-energy targets.
It is a debate about place.
It is about what we are prepared to industrialise, what we are prepared to disturb and what we believe deserves to survive.
Walshaw Moor. An open landscape of moorland, water and sky.The landscape tells its own story
The first thing that strikes you is the scale.
Photographs struggle to capture it.The moor is not an empty piece of unused land waiting for somebody to find a commercial purpose for it. It is a functioning upland landscape , grasses, heather, peat, watercourses, reservoirs, stone walls, tracks and wildlife all woven together across an enormous area.
At various points on the walk the countryside opens into long views over the valleys. Water catches the sunlight below. In other places the path disappears into bracken and rough vegetation.There are few straight lines.That matters, because what is proposed for this landscape is anything but small.
Calderdale Energy Park’s current 2026 design proposes up to 34 wind turbines, each reaching up to 200 metres to blade tip, with an approximate total generating capacity of 240 MW. Earlier designs contemplated 65 turbines, then 41; the battery storage element included in previous versions has now been removed.
The project is being pursued through the nationally significant infrastructure process following a direction under section 35 of the Planning Act 2008.
Those are the numbers.
Walking beneath the proposed landscape is when those numbers begin to acquire meaning.
Following the path into the Walshaw Moor landscape.
A landscape at human scale
As I walked towards the higher ground, one photograph in particular captured something that planning drawings rarely convey.A person becomes tiny in this landscape.An old stone building sits ahead. A walker approaches through the grass. Stone walls cross the hillside. Beyond them, the country continues towards the horizon.
For generations, people have crossed landscapes like this on foot.
The buildings, walls and tracks do not dominate the moor. They sit within it.
That is very different from introducing structures approaching 200 metres in height.
A turbine of that scale is not simply another object in the landscape. Its visibility can extend for miles. Roads have to reach it. Foundations have to support it. Cables must connect it. Construction compounds, crane areas and associated works become part of the physical project.
The question therefore cannot merely be:
Can a turbine technically be constructed here?
It must also be:
What happens to the character of the place when it is?
Walking towards one of the old stone buildings on the moor.
Then the moor moved
There was another reason the walk stayed with me.
Wildlife.At one point I saw a dark bird with striking black-and-white colouring and what appeared to be red above the eye. From the observation I made at the time, it looked remarkably like a male black grouse.
But I did not obtain a photograph and I am not presenting that identification as scientifically confirmed. Brown or red grouse and other possibilities have to be considered.
So the responsible description is: a probable male black grouse.
Later came another fleeting encounter , a compact, stocky hare-like animal moving through the moorland.Again, I did not get the photograph
I would need to claim a definitive identification. Its appearance raised the possibility of a mountain hare, but a brown hare cannot responsibly be excluded.So once again the proper description is:
a probable mountain hare.
Why mention observations that cannot be conclusively proven?
Because that is how people actually experience a living landscape.
Wildlife does not stand beside an identification board waiting to be catalogued.
Birds disappear over the heather. Animals break cover for seconds and vanish. Sometimes all you are left with is the observation itself and the responsibility not to exaggerate it.
And this is precisely why thorough ecological surveying matters.
Calderdale Council’s own response to the 2026 statutory consultation raised serious concerns about the ecological information supplied for the project. Its Biodiversity Team highlighted outstanding survey work, peat and habitat issues and concerns over important upland bird populations, including species associated with the Special Protection Area.
The Council also raised concerns about impacts on deep peat, blanket bog, hydrology and downstream drainage.
Those are not campaign slogans.
They are issues raised by the host local authority during the statutory consultation.
Open moorland on Walshaw Moor , habitat as well as landscape.
Peat is not just mud
Walk across upland country and it is easy to underestimate what lies beneath the vegetation.Peat does not announce itself with a sign.Yet peatland performs several functions at once. It stores carbon, influences water movement and supports specialised habitats.
Disturbing it is therefore not equivalent to excavating an ordinary mineral soil and putting it back afterwards.
This is one of the contradictions at the heart of proposals to construct large renewable-energy infrastructure on peat landscapes.
The purpose of the development is presented in environmental terms:
decarbonisation, renewable generation and progress towards national climate targets.
But the construction itself has environmental consequences.
The question is not whether wind power produces low-carbon electricity when operating. It does.
The harder question is whether this particular development, of this scale, in this particular landscape, produces an acceptable overall result once the construction footprint, peat disturbance, ecology, hydrology, access infrastructure, landscape effects and cumulative consequences are considered.
That question deserves an evidence-based answer.
It should not be predetermined simply because the project carries the label “renewable”.
Watercourses run through the moorland landscape , reminding us that what happens on the high ground does not necessarily stay there.
The proposal has already changed dramatically
There is another important point.
The design has not remained static.
The earliest concept considered as many as 65 turbines, together with solar and battery storage. By 2025 that had become 41 turbines and BESS. The current 2026 proposal has been reduced again to a maximum of 34 turbines, while both the solar component and BESS have been removed.
That evolution is significant.
It demonstrates that environmental, technical and community constraints are capable of changing the project.
It should also encourage further scrutiny rather than less.
If dozens of turbines and entire technologies can disappear from a proposal as the evidence develops, then asking difficult questions at this stage is not obstruction.It is precisely what consultation is supposed to achieve.Indeed, Calderdale Council went considerably further in June 2026. After identifying what it described as errors, inconsistencies, omissions and outstanding environmental information in the consultation material, the Council formally requested that the developer withdraw the consultation, rectify the deficiencies and undertake a fresh statutory consultation based on a stable and reliable document set.
Whatever view someone takes of wind power generally, that deserves attention.This is bigger than a view
Campaigns to protect countryside are sometimes dismissed as though they are motivated purely by people objecting to seeing infrastructure from their windows.
Walking Walshaw Moor exposes how inadequate that argument is.
Landscape matters, certainly.
But so do peat, water, wildlife, construction access, cultural history, tourism and the cumulative effect of transforming an upland environment.
There is also something harder to quantify.
Wildness.Not wilderness in the strict sense , this is a landscape influenced by people for centuries , but the ability to walk into a place where human structures remain subordinate to the land around them.
That quality has value even when a spreadsheet cannot easily assign a price to it.
The scale and openness of Walshaw Moor are difficult to appreciate until you stand within it.
Renewable energy still has to be in the right place
Opposing this development does not require somebody to oppose every wind turbine in Britain.
Nor does questioning a wind farm on sensitive peatland require denying that Britain needs electricity.
The rational position is simpler.
Energy infrastructure should be judged on its whole impact.
That means energy output, reliability and system value, but it also means construction, ecology, carbon disturbance, landscape, grid infrastructure, communities and alternatives.
The environmental case for a project cannot begin and end with the technology mounted at the top of the tower.
We should be capable of saying two things simultaneously:
Britain needs secure energy.
And some landscapes deserve protection from industrial development.
Those statements are not contradictory.
A serious national energy strategy should be capable of accommodating both.
Go and see it
That is ultimately why I wanted to write this article.
Not simply to tell people what I think about Walshaw Moor.
I want people to see it.
Walk the path.
Look across the water.
Stand among the grass and heather.
Look towards the old stone buildings.
Listen.
Watch the birds.
And then try to imagine structures up to 200 metres high occupying that horizon.
Planning documents are necessary. Environmental statements are necessary. Maps, modelling and consultation reports are necessary.
But sometimes a landscape needs to be experienced before the significance of a proposal becomes clear.
Once places such as this are fundamentally changed, another generation cannot simply vote to put them back.That is why the argument over Walshaw Moor matters.
It is not a choice between caring about the climate and caring about the countryside.
It is a test of whether environmental policy is capable of recognising that the countryside itself is part of the environment we claim to be protecting.
And after walking Walshaw Moor, I believe that question deserves far more attention before any final decision is made.
[IMAGE: walshaw-moor-landscape-15.jpg or a final panoramic photograph]
Before we industrialise a landscape, we should at least have the courage to walk through it.
Shane Oxer. Campaigner for fairer and affordable energy
SAY NO TO THE DESTRUCTION OF OUR LAND 
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