A Tory peer who pioneered wind farms in the UK before adopting sceptical views on climate change has been revealed as a donor to Lord Lawson’s anti-global-warming think tank.

Lord Cavendish, a former energy minister who claims to have built Britain’s first wind farm, has confirmed that he is a donor to Lord Lawson’s Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which has refused to disclose its backers.

The peer, who worked in the Department of Energy under Margaret Thatcher, lives in Holker Hall, a 17,000-acre neo-Elizabethan stately home on Cumbria’s Cartmel Peninsula. “I’ve made – I cannot remember what – quite a modest contribution [to GWPF] and I look for a chance to support it if there is a debate. It definitely wasn’t big bucks,” he told the DeSmogBlog website, which first revealed him to be a donor.

Lord Lawson is a well-known climate sceptic (Getty)

He added: “I think I might be the first person in this country to have built wind farms. I thought at the time ‘am I doing a good thing or a bad thing?’ I came to the conclusion it was the wrong thing.

“I think the religious fervour element is seriously dangerous. I like to think Lord Lawson is on the side of the angels.”

Lord Lawson has always insisted that the GWPF does not have an agenda. But last October the Charity Commission ruled that it had breached rules on impartiality in its climate-change coverage.

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The organisation’s other backers include businessman Neil Record, who has also given more than £300,000 to the Conservative Party as well as £18,000 of donations to Tory energy minister Matthew Hancock.