Engineers were yesterday granted permission by the Scottish Executive to build the largest onshore windfarm in Europe, after they agreed to erect a new radar tower for Glasgow airport.
ScottishPower’s new windfarm, at Whitelee, south of Glasgow, will cost £300m to build and its 140 turbines will produce enough electricity to power 200,000 homes. The new facility, the company’s second big windfarm in Scotland’s central belt, is expected to generate some 322 MW of electricity when it enters full operation in 2009.
As part of the five-year planning process, ScottishPower has worked with BAA, which operates Glasgow airport, and National Air Traffic Services to prevent the windfarm producing a fizzy image on the radar screens that monitor aircraft taking off and landing at Glasgow. The solution will be to build a new radar tower at a former ScottishPower power station at Kincardine in Fife.
ScottishPower, the largest operator of onshore windfarms in the UK, has also agreed to move the Met Office’s weather radar, which provides weather detection services across Scotland’s central belt, from Whitelee to two new locations. The windfarm will include a visitors centre, walking and cycling facilities.
Allan Wilson, deputy enterprise minister with the Scottish Executive, said the new facility marked a milestone towards Scotland meeting its renewable energy and climate change targets. The executive has pledged to generate 18% of national electricity from renewable sources by 2010 and 40% by 2020.
Is there minority opposition? Typically, a few single-issue groups that, sadly, rely more on emotion and apocrypha than science for their analysis. They’re coupled with holiday home-owners and NIMBY’s worried about their picturesque investment. Some of the best coverage of that aspect of the question comes from the West Highland Free Press, an old-fashioned weekly that’s spent decades on the side of the small farmers and native residents of the Highlands and Islands — folks who’d benefit directly from the construction and income from wind-generated electricity.
Over the 30 years I’ve been active in environmental issues, the groups consistently science-based in their efforts tend not to be distracted by or taken over by NIMBY’s. But, they’re always around. Broader, larger enviro groups have endorsed the Whitelee windfarm for the best reasons.
Makes sense, exactly why this will either never happen in the US or on such a small scale as to be nothing more then a curiosity. Pols are too worried about NIBYs to do what is necessary.
So who’s going to supply the wind: Limbaugh or O’Reilly?
SN, I guess you are, what does the article have to do with either of those two or conservative in general?
I’m sorry gquaglia, but if we don’t launch meaningless and random attacks against the Right on this Blog regular users will get confused and stop reading.
True
>
Great. At least they have winds there abundant, without the need to import Limbaugh and/or O’Reilly.
How are they going to achieve their “climate change targets”? Catalysts for farting cows?
I am glad that we are finally getting the wind farm built, this has been in the pipeline for a long time.
I was kind of concerned that Jack McConnell (Our first minister) would buckle under pressure and not give it the go-ahead. It is bizarre, but minorities seem to have more power than the majority in Scotland.
Labour have finally managed to gain a little respect from me, don’t get me wrong however, I am not a Tory or a Lib Dem fan, they are all equally guff in my opinion. Nimmo for El Presidente!
I have seen too many good ideas go into the Scottish Parliament get bashed about and come out completely rubbish.
This is great…..finally it went through. The groups still opposing it are mainly those who claim it will wreak the local enviroment and scenic view. The Greens and most of the national enviro groups backed this plan.
Now, if they could just get the other farms in the north going and the off shore ones, Scotland will meet it’s emissions decrease goals long before the rest of Britain.
If the U.S. were to put one just outside the halls of congress they could power the entire country east of the Mississippi from just one session of congress.
Lotta wind in Scotland. You think those bagpipes inflate themselves?
SN, you make it clear we commonly attack the left too, but they are so helpless that we can’t over-do it.
I want a personal turbine. You strap in on your ass and eat a lot of beans…
Why’d they have to agree to build a radar station to get it done? THis is extortion.
In Iran I belive they try to use what will work
NU CLEAR ENR…AH THE LIGHT SO BRIGH…
AB CD….because the placement of the wind turbines caused interferance on the radars. They also paid to give more height to the air traffic controller tower at Glasgow airport.
If private business wants to build something that makes money but causes various problems, then they should be willing to pony up whats needed to correct the problems they will create.
Here in America, ethanol requires more energy to produce than the gasoline it saves; nuclear energy is too dangerous; geothermal & wind energy is too expensive and unreliable. Isn’t it interesting that what’s impossible in America is standard proceedure abroad??
Last December when I drove through Wyoming, about a third of the 50 or so windmills I passed were either not moving or barely turning at all. Considering I was fighting a 40 mile-an-hour headwind for the whole length of the state, I find it disturbing that so much “free” energy was being wasted.
Golly, what possible motive could the power company have for not placing that extra power on the grid?