I recently had the welcome opportunity to visit a local hill farm here in the Black Mountains, where the farmer has built a small hydroelectric plant to take advantage of the two resources that Wales is especially rich in:  water and hills.  This project was undertaken with the active support of the Green Valleys initiative, which is a volunteer-run organisation based in the Brecon Beacons and surrounding areas that “aims to enable community groups across Wales to reduce their carbon emissions and generate electricity and revenue from hydro power, one of the most abundant natural resources we have“.

The Green Valleys group helped farmer Alan Williams plan and install a small hydroelectric plant on his steep hillside farm in 2007.  He now generates and sells a significant energy surplus into the National Grid, providing a vital extra income stream at a time of immense pressure on hill farmers, as well as reducing the environmental impact of his own energy use.  The installation has had a minimal visual impact on his lovely hill farm, nestled in the head of a small valley near Abergavenny, and he does not anticipate any significant maintenance or running costs, so the project will pay for itself through the sale of suprlus energy within 3 years.

However, when he initially investigated the potential for setting up a hydro plant, he discovered that although the government officially provides grants to encourage such developments, these grants are tied to specific – very expensive – suppliers.  In the end, it was cheaper to forget about the government scheme and rely instead on the advice and support of the Green Valleys team, who also helped him to find appropriate equipment and the local skills to install it, far more cheaply than under the government-sponsored scheme with its expensive consultancy requirements and limited list of “preferred suppliers”.

This highlights a common problem with top-down government-sponsored schemes:  even if they are well-intended, they are too often tied to large political and commercial interests and fail to address properly the needs and priorities of the intended recipient.  It seems ludicrous that farmers are actually prevented from following their own energy-saving agenda by the prohibitive costs associated with taking part in the government’s “subsidised” scheme, a scheme that is intended to support precisely these projects.

Meanwhile, Green Valleys sees these small-scale projects as a vital step forward in transforming the local economy, not just in terms of energy use but also as a way to generate income for farmers and for local workers who can supply many of the skills needed to carry out installation work.  Green Valleys is continuing to sponsor various energy and conservation schemes across the region, and hopes to expand its activities further as resources allow.  This inspiring and pragmatic approach to grassroots environmental transformation deserves greater recognition and support, both from the community and from the political classes in Wales and beyond.

So let’s hope Green Valleys are successful as one of the finalists in the UK’s Big Green Challenge and manage to claim a share of the £1 million prize: we know they will make good use of the money.