MONMOUTHSHIRE Conservatives have called on Monmouthshire Council’s Cabinet to reject a controversial plan costed at almost £5bn to achieve Net Zero by 2050.

The council’s Local Area Energy Plan proposes covering 33km sq of Monmouthshire in ground-mounted solar panels, retrofitting every property with a heat pump, building 4MW worth of wind turbines and installing 23,000 public electric vehicle charging points.

That many EV charging points equates to more than one per two residential properties, so a town the size of Monmouth would have around 3,000 charging points installed in public areas.

The plan was funded by Welsh Government, commissioned by the Cardiff Capital Region, but ‘led and developed at the local level’.

The plan is listed on the cabinet agenda for today (Wednesday, September 17), ‘to seek endorsement’ from the eight cabinet members.

Cllr Richard John, Conservative Leader said, “We support sensible and affordable steps towards reducing the council’s carbon emissions, but the proposals contained in this document are insane.

“Covering an area the size of 5,000 football pitches in solar panels would inevitably result in the loss of agricultural land for industrialisation, killing off family farms and desecrating our beautiful countryside.

“Instead, the council should be building on the work of the previous Conservative-run council where we installed solar panels on council buildings and installed solar panel carports in existing car parks. This is where we need solar panels, not at the expense of quality agricultural land.

“These crazy proposals are so expensive that if the council had to fund 100% of the cost it would need to spend the entire annual council budget on them every year for the next 20 years.

“The cabinet should reject this daft plan and come up with more realistic proposals that don’t industrialise our green county or waste taxpayers’ money.”