Campaigners fighting against a controversial windfarm fear the council has “failed” to protect a “precious and unique” landscape. The local authority has told the Scottish Government it cannot provide a formal response on plans for turbines at Mochrum Fell near Corsock because the planning applications committee hasn’t made a decision.

General UK

Matt Hancock said: “Lucy and I have been working very closely on this proposal and despite my view being that we need renewable energy, from the moment I saw the map, I was not in favour of this project. “My immediate concerns are the overall impact on the environment and local area, the size of this material change and the batteries, which can be problematic in terms of safety when used on this scale.” He added: “The fact that Sunnica have put a project of this size forward and then not turned up to this meeting is arrogant.”

General UK

Energy giant SSE said its renewable assets produced 32% less power than expected between April 1 and Sept. 22 thanks to historically dry and low-wind conditions. This equates to 11% of its full-year output target.“This shortfall was driven by unfavourable weather conditions over the summer, which was one of the least windy across most of the UK and Ireland and one of the driest in SSE’s Hydro catchment areas in the last seventy years.

General UK

[T]here are costs and risks associated with considering each individual wind farm planning application, calibrating the technology to allow it to deal with any particular wind farm and thereafter ongoing costs associated with maintaining the performance of that technology over the lifespan of a wind farm, which is clearly essential in the interests of aviation safety. “It is typically recognised and the industry norm that the party benefiting from the wind farm should provide compensation to radar operators for the associated costs and risks.

General UK

Campaigners allege that the wind industry’s tax havens have deprived public services of “many millions” of pounds, while boosting private profits. Scotland’s renewable energy wealth is being “looted” by international tax avoiders, and profits “siphoned overseas”, they say. According to experts, wind farm ownership is “opaque” and “secretive”. The “bright green image” promoted by the renewable energy industry is “more a murky shade of grey”, says one.

General UK

Dismissing anyone who opposes this as a nimby allows developers to present themselves as holding the moral high ground. Nimbys are anti-progress refuseniks, they say, while developers are good for the economy, bringing improved infrastructure and even environmental gains. Yet anyone who has been involved in a local campaign will tell you how rarely developers contribute to local infrastructure, and how frequently finished developments can differ from original plans. The proportion of affordable housing is invariably the first casualty, renegotiated downwards as soon as planning permission is achieved.

General UK

Emeritus professor of the rural environment Michael Alder, who is a Fellow of the Royal Agricultural Society, said a national debate was needed on the future of the countryside – including biodiversity and landscape as well as food and fuel. “Land is finite, and whatever you use it for there are trade-offs. “Sometimes these trade-offs are acceptable and sometimes they are not. “I have a particular concern about food security – the Sunnica proposal is for land that is very productive.”

General UK

The renewable energy company now wants six turbines measuring 200m; one at 190m and three at 150m. Ms Herrick previously said she had been taken aback at the speed at which Energiekontor UK sought a variance to its original consent and that developers should not be allowed to continually alter plans.

General UK

The hill at Knock Iveagh, which is home to a stone-age burial cairn, was an inauguration site for Irish kings and is a protected monument. A planning mistake meant archaeological experts were not consulted about the turbine application before approval was given. They later said that had they been, they would have recommended refusal.

General UK

‘Renewables are just not what people think they are. People think that they harmonise society with the natural world but that’s fantasy. Renewables can’t save the planet, are we going to keep letting them destroy it?’ ...Pound for pound, however, rare earths are vastly more intensive to extract and refine. To Shellenberger that, in combination with renewables’ unreliable, diffuse power, makes the entire green-energy revolution – Boris’s billions and Biden’s trillions – a vast mistake. ‘Renewables are going to have to fail, and they will fail spectacularly everywhere over the next several years, before we discover that really there’s no alternative, in terms of climate change, to doing a lot of nuclear.’

General UK

Last Wednesday the wind died, and Britain’s fleet of thousands of wind turbines mostly stopped turning. The engineers at National Grid had seen the problem coming: temperatures and wind speeds had been low all week and were forecast to fall further.

General UK

A Borders resident says they are “worried” about plans to build a wind farm near their home. Last month, this newspaper reported that E Power Limited will apply for planning permission to build the farm at Ditcher Law north of Oxton. But now a village resident says the proposal to build 15 wind turbines is “not really suitable” for the area.

General UK

Controversial plans by a north-east energy firm to build wind turbines on the edge of a village have prompted more than 340 objections from nearby residents. St Fergus Energy Limited hopes to build two 119 metre high turbines on land between the village and the gas terminal, owned by North Sea Midstream Partners on the nearby coast line. However the proposals, submitted by Midlothian firm Green Cat Renewables, have prompted outcry from the community.

General UK

A public inquiry into plans for a 39-turbine wind farm in a Highland mountain range has heard it could ultimately lead to a “complex larger than the city of Dundee” being built on a “once tranquil plateau”. The proposed Glenshero development would be sited next to the recently built 66-turbine Stronelairg wind farm in the Monadhliath mountains.

General UK

Residents of a picturesque Highland glen have gone head-to-head with developers over a wind farm name change. Developer Vento Ludens has told residents in the areas likely to be impacted by the wind farm near Glen Affric that the project name has changed from Fasnakyle to Fiodhag.

General UK

Trade unions have been highly critical of the failure to secure more renewable power engineering work for BiFab. Work on turbine jackets was seen as the best hope for Scotland's offshore fabrication sector. However, contracts have repeatedly gone to overseas yards, including Spain and Indonesia.

General UK

"Both the First Minister and the Prime Minister promised a green jobs revolution but they didn't tell anyone it would be exported, and it all amounts to broken promises to workers who needed these yards to be thriving instead of dying. "The fabrication contracts for NnG, just like those on the Seagreen project, will be manufactured by the rest of the world.

General UK

Energiekontor had appealed against Scottish Borders Council's rejection of its eight-turbine Wull Muir scheme. However, a reporter said it "failed to respect" the character of the area and turned down the appeal.

General UK

In a statement, the National Grid Electricity Systems Operator (ESO) said: "Unusually low wind output coinciding with a number of generator outages means the cushion of spare capacity we operate the system with has been reduced." It added that it was exploring measures to ensure that there was enough generation available to increase its capacity, and would update the market later on Wednesday evening.

General UK

The pilot decided to fly the aircraft at 400 ft above the ground to provide clearance of 72 ft between it and the top of the turbine blades, which the pilot assessed to be a sufficient distance," the statement continued. "However, the aircraft was destroyed when it flew into a wind turbine which had a height of 413 ft above the ground."

General UK