ANTI-wind farm campaigners believe Scotland may be seeing the first signs
of a slow down in the dash for onshore turbines as a major company
announced plans to shift its focus away from turbine projects.
Atmos Consulting is to relaunch its Inverness office, just months after the
UK Government announced it would cut windfarm subsidies.
It has already trebled its expert staffing, as it announces a shift away
from investing in turbine-led power towards wider development opportunities
in the north.
In June, the newly elected Conservative Government said that it is to cut
subsidies to new wind farm projects.
Campaign group Scotland Against Spin said Atmos’s decision follows a number
of windfarm projects being abandoned at the planning stage, mothballed or
rebranded as community led project.
Atmos denies this week’s move is linked to the decision.
It says it had decided on the strategy some time ago, as a vote of
confidence in the development prospects across the Highlands and Grampian,
at a time when the oil industry is also in trouble.
Inverness winning a City Deal, already agreed in principle by the UK
Government and which could herald a reported £300m in new investment, is
just one of the factors in its thinking.
Established in 2007, Atmos Consulting became a fully independent
environmental consultancy practice in March 2014, following the sale of its
former parent company, West Coast Energy. It has offices in England, Wales
and Scotland.
Managing Director, Stewart Lowther said “Atmos has always been an
environmental consultancy. We have never been just a wind farm consultancy,
although onshore wind has dominated our work in the last few years and we
may too often be seen as associated only with wind energy developers. We
are not turning our back on wind, which still has a future in the region.
However our skills and expertise are much broader and we feel the time is
right to make a bit more noise about that. We don’t want to be seen as just
involved in wind farms.
“This widening of our focus pre-dated the government’s announcement on the
curtailment of onshore wind subsidies. We have been working on changing our
strategy for about 18 months, recognising what was happening in the north.”
He said the Inverness office had long been important to Atmos, covering an
area where there had been a lot of wind farm activity.
“But we have recognised that the region as a whole is one where economic
development has really picked up, in terms of housing and commercial
development around Inverness and the wider region across the Highlands and
Grampian.”
He said you only had to look at how the population had been increasing and
was projected to continue – 21,000 more people are expected to be living in
Inverness by the year 2035 compared to 2012 – to see that there was going
to be an increasing demand for houses, for schools, hospital facilities,
and other infrastructure.
Linda Holt, spokeswoman for Scotland Against Spin, which campaigns for
reform of Scottish wind policy, said:
“This is a wise move by Atmos which recognised over 18 months ago that the
boom in onshore wind development in Scotland was ending. Shrewd investors
like the original West Coast Energy directors got out of the game long
before the new Conservative government made good on its promise to end
subsidies for new wind farms.
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“In the last few months, a number of wind projects at various stages in the
planning process have been abandoned, mothballed or rebranded as community
projects in the hope that they will attract Scottish Government funding.”
One industry source pointed to the recent research done for trade body
Scottish Renewables which confirmed fears investors were turning away from
onshore wind.
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