Wind farm and hydro scheme deal will make Duke of Buccleuch even richer
A BUYER has been found for a £250m hydro energy scheme at a former opencast coal mine in the south of Scotland involving one of Britain’s biggest private landowners.
The eight-turbine wind farm and hydro park project at Glenmuckloch near Kirkconnel in Dumfries and Galloway was approved by planners more than six years ago and has been in the pipeline for over nine years.
Now Buccleuch and Foresight Energy Infrastructure Partners have reached a deal for investment in the Glenmuckloch pumped storage hydro (PSH) and wind farm project to allow it to go ahead.
The land is owned by one of the UK’s most powerful hereditary landowners, the Duke of Buccleuch who have previously moved to defend plans to set up a wind farm despite his late father’s opposition.
The wind farm made up of eight 4.2 MW turbines will have the ability, via a direct connection to power the PSH plant. Buccleuch says it marks the end of its day-to-day involvement in . the project although it will retain ownership of the land.
The ninth Duke, Johnnie Buccleuch, who died in 2007 aged 83, said wind farms were inefficient as well as being a blot on the landscape.
In 2013 his son, Richard, now 68, the 10th Duke of Buccleuch objected to a 17-turbine wind farm near Hermitage Castle near Hawick as “nothing short of vandalism”.
But in the same year he was supportive of his plans for the wind farm and hydro power park on the mine site and it had been hoped it would be producing energy by 2015
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