Remembering Peter Edwards - a tribute to a wind power trailblazer

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18 November 2025

Over the last few weeks I have written many words about my late father, the wind power pioneer Peter Edwards, who died, aged 90, at his home in Cornwall this September. When drafting the tribute for his memorial service, my brothers and I sifted through Dad’s papers, the family photo albums and our memories for material. We thought we had captured the essence of who he was, and done justice to his many achievements, not least opening the UK’s first commercial wind farm in 1991: ten 400kW Vestas Windane 34 turbines at Delabole, in North Cornwall. But recently, reading the host of comments posted online by those who knew him as a leader, mentor, colleague and friend in the renewable energy sector, I realise that we saw just a glimpse of the impact he had in that world.

He is widely acclaimed by his peers as a visionary, a true pioneer of renewable energy in the UK. Financial wizard Jonathan Johns, for example, recalls their meetings in the early days when Delabole windfarm was still just a sketch on a paper napkin, drawn up over a hotel lunch meeting:

"I was impressed by his enthusiasm and determination… it was infectious. My colleagues thought me mad to take the risk (of supporting the project) and for a while I couldn’t avoid their constant comparison to Don Quixote. I think Peter enjoyed that. We then began the odyssey of stitching together the finance package, liaising with the other project partners, to turn the vision into reality."

Marcus Trinick KC was there at the start too:

"Peter and I approached the planning stage in blissful ignorance of what lay ahead. It's fair to say that we learned more in a month about how landscape effects were addressed, how to think about operational noise, and how to explain what we painfully discovered to an equally ignorant Planning Officer than we could have guessed. It is no exaggeration to say that Peter fundamentally changed the direction of my career. Before Delabole Wind Farm I was a planning lawyer. Afterwards I was a wind farm lawyer, as indeed I still am."

Johns continues:

"Little did we know that what became a band of brothers would be laying the foundations of the British wind industry as well as the wider renewable energy industry both of whose key bodies, the British Wind Energy Association (now RenewableUK) and The Renewable Energy Association, he would go on to chair (1996–98 and 2002–04 respectively). Or perhaps Peter did know, as the quiet twinkle in his eye always had behind it huge ambition - his own indefatigable source of renewable energy, his good-humoured counsel always there driving things forwards. That spark ignited something in all of us and now the industry is mainstream and it's the climate change deniers who are left tilting at windmills."

Juliet Davenport OBE, founder of Good Energy, first met Peter and my brother, Martin, a few years later, when she was setting up the company:

"I was visiting UK renewable energy sites with our investor from Germany, and I can still remember turning up and talking to Martin and Peter, and them being the first generators to take us seriously, forming their company Windelectric to supply customers with renewable energy. He was one of our very first supporters — selling his power to us to help kickstart the business, and later merging with us. Delabole Windfarm embodied everything he believed in: practical action, community spirit, and faith in clean energy’s future. Peter was affectionately known as 'the godfather of UK wind power' - but to those of us who knew him, he was also a source of quiet wisdom, humour, and unwavering encouragement, always hugely positive, interested and welcoming. His belief in what was possible helped shape a movement that continues to grow today.

To others, such as Justin Heath, Head of Corporate Affairs at Resonate, he was "not only a forward thinker and an early adopter, but also a great educator. I had the pleasure of meeting him and being greatly inspired when we [Yorkshire Water Group] were developing wind farms in the mid-nineties."

Adrian Lloyd, former director at Meld Energy, writes:

"From the time I was his understudy on the BWEA tour of party-political conferences in 1993, through our interactions on the BWEA board to the decision to set up the REA, he was never anything other than considered, professional, gracious and always worth listening to. He was a giant on whose shoulders the rest of us stood."

Peter’s political influence is another theme that stands out. Chris Shears, Operating Director, I Squared, tells of how "he brought patience, dignity and real-world experience to a young industry which was critical at the time to win support from Government." Trinick describes how "Peter, Andrew Garrad, Ian Mays and I met numerous sceptical Ministers to push the cause, one being Lord Deben, the recent Chair of the Climate Change Committee, but then a very doubtful Secretary of State for the Environment."

Apparently when he first discussed the wind farm plans with Andrew Garrad, a fellow wind energy pioneer, Peter described himself as 'just a simple farmer. "Not true!", says Andrew. "He really was a trailblazer. The whole British wind energy community owes him a huge debt."

To us, he may have been just Dad, of whom we are immensely proud. But to the British wind industry, he was clearly so much more.

Peter Dixon Edwards was born on 2 September 1935 and died on 20 September 2025.