By Jamie Buchan
Mountaineers have rejected a controversial study which claims wind farms
have no impact on Scotland’s tourism jobs.
The research, published by BiGGAR Economics, looked at 18 turbine
developments across Scotland and examined the number of people employed in
tourism in the local area before and after they were developed.
It poured cold water over one of the biggest arguments against wind farm
proliferation – an argument put forward by Donald Trump – and claimed to
show that some of the local authority areas with the greatest growth in
tourism employment also saw the greatest rise in inshore installations.
But the report has been slammed by the Mountaineering Scotland, which
argues it is fatally flawed.
Dave Gordon, director for landscape and planning, said: “This report
assumes that all wind farms are equal and have the same effect on tourism,
but that’s not the case.”
Dr Gordon, who has worked on his own research for 30 years, said the BiGGAR
report fails because it ignores the importance of location when measuring
the effect of wind farms and uses sample areas which could fail to show
very real effects.
“You wouldn’t expect wind farms to have any effect in areas where tourism
is not dependent on landscape – and all the wind farms cited in this report
are in such areas, with none having been objected to by Mountaineering
Scotland,” he said.
“In areas where the landscape is a major factor in attracting tourism –
such as mountain areas – our own surveys have shown that people are
deterred by the presence of wind farms. However, these areas are not
included in the BiGGAR report.”
Dr Gordon said there was a basic error in the design of the study: “If you
are going to test for any effect from wind farm construction, you need a
baseline where there are no wind farms to allow a proper comparison.
“In at least five of the locations in the study there were operational wind
farms already there and in two more cases there were wind farms under
construction.
“That really is a fatal flaw. You can’t have a valid before and after study
without a proper baseline.”
He added: “The best that could be claimed would be that Scottish wind farms
in areas where the tourism market is less sensitive to landscape have no
aggregate effect on tourism jobs.
“And in view of the other flaws in the study, event that cannot be said
with any conviction.”
Graeme Blacket, of Edinburgh-based BiGGAR, said he stood by the report.
“The analysis considers all wind farms over 10 megawatts that became
operational over a two year period,” he said. “We would have been rightly
criticised if we had been selective in our case studies as Mountaineering
Scotland (MCoS) suggests.”
He added: “Our study did not specifically consider mountaineering related
tourism. However, a recent survey by MCoS (which has been submitted to the
forthcoming Whitelaw Brae Wind Farm Public Inquiry but does not seem to
have been published on its own website yet) did and it found that only 1%
of its own members visited mountains less as a result of wind farms while
2% visited more often because they like to see wind turbines.”
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