Scotsman letters
There are 2,245 wind turbines in Highland Council’s patch, either built or possibly on the way. There are more off-shore. When the wind blows, that will be enough for at least 11 million homes, but there are only 5.5 million people in Scotland. This electricity isn’t for the Highlands or even for Scotland, it is for England.
The tallest turbines proposed onshore are 250m high. If they are built they will be the tallest objects onshore in Scotland. The National Wallace Monument stands 167 metres high and the towers of the Queensferry Crossing are 210m. England’s tallest cathedral, Salisbury, is a mere 123m, and the London Eye is 135m. A new overhead power line is planned, on pylons 57m high, for 170km from Caithness in the far north to the large village of Beauly, together with three giant substations. It is claimed an overhead line is the cheapest way to connect the power, but no details have been published. Have they considered the environmental costs of the line and its construction, and the costs of maintaining it in some very wild weather?
This is the biggest change in the Highlands since the dams were built in the 1950s. They brought electricity to the Highlands for the first time, but we see no comparable benefit from the current proposals. We are just seeing the creeping industrialisation of the region by an industry that will provide very few permanent jobs, once the chaos of the construction is complete. It’s all part of meeting a 2030 deadline which some leading economists consider impossible anyway. The UK will just have lost its last vestiges of relatively wild land. Already, there are few of Scotland’s iconic Munros from which you can’t see a windfarm.
No-one has asked us Highlanders whether we want this change, or has talked to us seriously about how we might benefit. We have just one MP and one MSP, neither of whom will talk to us about this. We accept the UK must move to renewable power, but mightily resent the way that it is being imposed on us by people who have no idea of what it is doing to our communities, and apparently no interest either. This isn’t the way to do things in a democratic society.
John Heathcote, Contin, Highland
0 Comments