'Our wind farm won't discourage Bronte tourists'
BBCThe developers of England's largest wind farm have claimed that the turbines will not discourage visitors to moors once loved by the Bronte sisters.
Calderdale Energy Park is applying to construct 34 turbines on Walshaw Moor, between Hebden Bridge and Haworth - the village associated with Bronte tourism.
As a nine-week public consultation begins, chief executive Christian Egal told objectors that the development would provide "cheap, reliable and stable" energy.
Campaigners who oppose the plans for the West Yorkshire moorland said that the wind farm would turn the scenic area into an "industrial complex".
The South Pennine moors and Pennine Way have long been associated with writers Charlotte, Emily and Anne Bronte, who were raised at the parsonage in Haworth, now a museum, in the 1840s.
Speaking about the literary tourists, Egal said: "They will still come. Of course the turbines will be visible, but it will not affect the number of people visiting Top Withens. We expect the impact on the landscape to be moderate and acceptable for this area."
Top Withens is a ruined farmhouse that is thought to be the inspiration for Emily Bronte's 1847 novel Wuthering Heights.
Egal added: "Wuthering is an old Norse word that means "high winds", so it's not surprising that the site is very suitable for a wind farm."
He also predicted that some people would deliberately visit the turbines, comparing the development to the Saint Brieuc wind farm off the coast of Brittany in France.
"There are thousands of visitors every day taking a boat to visit the wind farm, it has been demonstrated that at similar sites the balance is not negative, there are lots of circumstances where wind farms attract a lot of interest."
But Nick Mackinnon, from Stronger Together to Stop Calderdale Wind Farm, said: "Visitors will walk over the moor - when they get to Top Withens, they'll see turbines poking over the horizon and spread out in front of them, it will be an industrial complex, it won't be a moor."
Calderdale Energy Park originally planned to build 65 turbines on the land, but scaled the number back to 41 in April 2025. The total was further reduced to 34 turbines in February 2026 after the company said it had listened to concerns from local residents.
It will eventually generate enough electricity to power 198,000 homes.
Walshaw Moor is also an internationally significant Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and Special Protection Area (SPA) for its extensive blanket bog habitat and endangered breeding bird species, such as curlew and lapwing.
Responding to fears that bird numbers would be reduced by the presence of turbines, Egal said: "It is absolutely important to protect the bird life, there may be some effect locally that we need to mitigate, but globally climate change is the number one danger for birds."
He added: "To move towards tackling climate change, we have to move towards sites with high capacity. It's not going to be achieved with a couple of turbines here and there, this scheme really is in line with what the government wants to do."
Access roads will be built over the moor but Egal said: "We avoid deep peat, each turbine is located where the peat is shallow and any peat that is removed will be reinstated locally so the net balance will be zero loss of peat.
"At a time when the cost of energy is once again at the top of everyone's minds, we encourage people to take part so all perspectives can be fully considered as the project is finalised ahead of submission later this year."
The application for the wind farm will be decided by Ed Miliband, the secretary of state for energy security and net zero, after the site was designated a Nationally Significant Infrastructure Project (NSIP), meaning it is too large in scale to be dealt with by Calderdale Council planning officers.
Six in-person consultation events will be held in the area between 17 April and 21 May.
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