Anyone who has been following the Lewis Wind Farm proposals have been under no illusion that it would succeed, ever since the Scottish Government hinted a couple of months ago that they were "minded" to oppose it. Today, they formally threw out the planning application.
The 181 turbines would have been Europe's largest single wind farm, on a prime site in the Western Isles of Scotland. The problem was that the area was a specially protected peatland area, home to some rare and endangered birds.
I've vacillated between being in favour of the wind farm, and being opposed to it. Part of me thinks that the peatlands and the birds will be buggered anyway if we don't reduce our CO2 output and this scheme would help to take a huge chunk out of the country's pollution. The other part of me thinks that we're supposed to be fighting climate change so that we can protect these areas of beauty for future generations, not ripping them up in order to power the latest gadgets.
The scheme would have provided 36% of the Scottish Government's 2010 renewable energy target. That's an awful lot of smaller wind schemes in other places.
Monday, April 21, 2008
Europe's Largest Wind Farm Scrapped
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1 comments:
I have to say I'm on the side of the nature conservationists on this one. We shouldn't need to industrialise remote areas valuable for wildlife to provide us with fuel so we can continue our unsustainable lifestyles for a bit longer. There are also issues i think about the stability of peat bog as a medium for building turbines on and a definite issue round the distribution of electricity from such a remote site to the population centres where most of the energy would be used.
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