Pull the other one!
April Fools Day seems to have come early this year (Scottish Gov urged to increase onshore wind power as survey shows support; Scotsman 22 Feb).
RenewableUK, the voice of the wind and solar power industry is always keen to demonstrate that there is overwhelming public support for the development of onshore windfarms, despite increasingly vocal protests from host communities and from environmentalists concerned for the damage caused to peat lands, birds and other wildlife.
Their last poll conducted by YouGov did not define either how many turbines comprise a windfarm or how high the turbines would be. There’s a slight difference between a 15m and 260m turbine at the bottom of your garden. Scottish rural respondents were not within 2 km, but 8 km (5 miles) of a windfarm. This distance is likely to include rural residents who receive ‘community benefit’ from the windfarm developer, but are too far away to suffer any direct adverse impact as well as landowners who are financially involved in the wind farm. The survey should have focused on rural residents within 2 to 3 km of a windfarm who receive no financial benefit of any kind.
The membership of campaign group Scotland Against Spin has more than doubled in the last two years as more wind farms are built ever closer to homes and more people become aware of the downside of living beside or surrounded by them.
Do RenewableUK actually expect us to believe this latest survey which is not even open to scrutiny as there is currently no reference to it on the Survation website.
Aileen Jackson
Knockglass
Uplawmoor
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