Thursday.
Advent Calendar.
According to
The Dunoon Observer - sorry if the link is down -
"A retired schoolteacher is spearheading a
fight to halt a wind farm development opposite his home in Kilfinan, near Tighnabruaich.
The development, across the water on the Kintyre peninsula, has been designated as consisting of fifteen 375 foot-high turbines, but could be as many as 45.
While wind farms have been widely promoted by the government as helping Britain reach its green target of producing renewable energy to meet its obligations under the Kyoto Treaty, development of the farms has attracted a great deal of opposition, although most of it so far has been south of the border.
Four years ago this reporter covered protests in the East Riding of Yorkshire, in the deputy prime minister's own backyard. The almost unanimous - and well-informed - opposition of the local population to two wind farm projects on the flat coastal Holderness plain forced the issue to a public inquiry. The protesters were supported by East Riding of Yorkshire Council, and in the event the larger of the two projects was refused permission. The second, for nine turbines, was granted only because it was close to a gas terminal, and was therefore regarded as being in an industrial area.
In Scotland generally, the march of wind farms has not met anything like the same level of opposition, although if all those in the planning pipelines are passed, there will be dozens of farms all over the country.
Currently there are 18 farms either up and running or proposed in Argyll. The prospect of one, at Alt Deargh, on the opposite side of Loch Fyne from his home in Kilfinan, has incensed retired English teacher Sinclair Sutherland.
Though he taught in England for many years, Mr Sutherland is a native of Cowal; he was born and bred in Sandbank and is a former pupil of Dunoon Grammar School and moved back to Argyll eight years ago with his wife Margaret.
He contends that onshore wind farms are little better than a cheap and inefficient sop to the green lobby, and that they contribute little to reducing the effect of greenhouse gases.
"There are better options open to power companies," he says. "There's biomass technology, geothermals, offshore wind farms and wave power - and in that respect Scotland could be a world leader if this natural asset was properly exploited.
"The fact is that wind power is inefficient; the figures which are churned out by power companies to promote wind farms are extremely misleading, for they represent a theoretical output which falls far short of the reality. The output quoted is based on the turbines running at peak output 24 hours a day, which simply does not happen. Actual output is normally around a quarter of the figures put out by the wind farm operators.
They are a cheap and inefficient option and will make a negligible contribution to our energy needs - the money used in building them would be better spent researching more practical forms of renewable energy."
He went on to argue that the publicity put out by N-power on the proposed Alt Dearg development was extremely misleading. "They have produced a photomontage which purports to show the towers as tiny dots on the horizon, which is very misleading. They are being portrayed as being almost invisible from Lochgilphead, which is simply not the case - they will be very visible indeed. The turbines are 50 feet higher than the
Red Road flats in Glasgow, the highest tower blocks in Europe."
"There's also the fact that this area is identified in the Argyll and Bute Local Plan as very sensitive to wind turbine development. If this goes through planning then a precedent will be set, and the whole area will be wide open for development.
"Consider that the wind turbines at Ardrossan can be clearly seen from Toward and Portavadie - that's an idea of the immensity of these things." Last week Mr Sutherland addressed a public meeting at Kilfinan Community Council. "It was simply an information meeting," he stressed, "but I felt that the members of the public who were present were receptive to what I was saying."
He is not alone in having concerns about the spread of wind turbines; locally he has the support of a number of people, but on a national level alarm bells are beginning to sound in some very influential quarters.
Among them are the Scottish Parliament and the local tourist board. Tourism in Argyll generated an estimated £330m in 2002 and employed 20,000 at the height of the season.
The wind farm industry claims that 90 percent of visitors are not put off by wind farms. Opponents claim, however, that the survey that produced these figures is suspect, and, though it was later withdrawn, it is still widely quoted as authoritative.
The tourist board survey, however, produced a result which is the mirror image of the wind industry survey, with the majority of respondents taking the view that wind turbines should not be located in scenic areas.
In a recent survey Country Life Magazine readers voted Wind Farms the number one rural eyesore. Country Life Magazine has since initiated an anti-wind farm campaign.
The Scottish Parliament's Enterprise Committee produced a report on Renewable Energy in June: The report noted that there was limited scope for increasing the economic benefit of wind power to Scotland: "The dominant companies in the field are foreign, particularly Danish. So far most of the equipment has been bought off the shelf and this brings relatively little benefit to the Scottish economy."
There was implicit criticism of the number of wind farms coming on stream; the report said: "There does currently appear to be a proliferation of large onshore, wind farm proposals concentrated in sensitive geographical areas, with which the planning system is struggling to cope."
It noted that The Renewables Obligation (Scotland) scheme had been successful, but in a single direction - that of pro-moting onshore wind power, without developing other sectors.
It said that the Executive's current renewables policy is unintentionally working against the development of renewable energy sources other than onshore wind power and observed that this over-reliance on one source of renewable energy is not good energy policy.
The report recommended that The Executive should create a comprehensive Scottish energy policy in co-operation with Westminster. This energy policy should seek to shift the focus from large onshore wind farms to other forms of renewable power.
Feed Address
