Exactly a week before Equinor’s planning application for sandwich tern mitigation measures at Loch Ryan is due to be heard by Dumfries & Galloway Council’s planning committee, the BBC website published a sympathetic article with the heading “Scots seabirds to get help from English wind farms”. Is the timing coincidental? A cynic might think not. Especially as the article is overwhelmingly supportive and creates the impression of renewable energy being a benefit to nature.
Any such idea could hardly be further from the truth. The reality is that Equinor (the Norwegian state-owned oil and gas company now specialising in blighting the UK with wind farms and hoovering up subsidies in return) is seeking on behalf of itself and its partners (including China Resources Power) to develop extensions to both the Dudgeon Offshore Wind Farm and the Sheringham Shoal Offshore Wind Farm, in the waters of the Greater Wash off Norfolk. As it is acknowledged that this will harm not only sandwich terns, but also kittiwakes and guillemot and razorbill, Equinor is obliged to put in place some mitigation measures.
What has that to do with Loch Ryan? You might well ask. It’s around 400 miles away from the proposed offshore windfarm extension, and sites offering potential for sandwich tern mitigation have been identified in Norfolk and on the Solent. However, Equinor (which, absurdly, gets to lead the process and to chair meetings of statutory consultees) has decided that Loch Ryan is to be the place, relying on the fact that sandwich terns used to nest on a low lying island nearby, which was gradually destroyed by the wash from fast ferries. Those fast ferries no longer operate on Loch Ryan, the wash of those that do operate are smaller, and there might be scope for reinstating the island. But that would be expensive, so not only has Equinor plumped for a location 400 miles from the site of its bird-killing, it’s decided to create an inland pond with islands on it, in the hope that sandwich terns can be persuaded to nest there, even though such a scenario does not represent the breeding ground preferred by the birds.
Equinor has produced a mountain of supporting documentation, which includes the claim that Natural England and RSPB have both indicated a preference for developing an inland pool for Sandwich tern at Loch Ryan, Scotland. But Natural England says its concerns regarding the design principles that relate to the setting of the proposed nesting islands (open water or open land) have not been addressed and that it has insufficient confidence that the habitats created will be sufficiently attractive.
Regarding the potential for the Solent as a site, during a meeting held in January 2022, Natural England queried as to whether the Solent or Isle of Wight would be a suitable location. In the view of Equinor’s consultant, at the time this location was considered a‘more risky’ option and was therefore not chosen to be pursued by Equinor.
It gets worse. When one landowner (a farmer, whose small farm’s viability depended on the farmland that Equinor initially identified as a possible site for its pond and islands) declined to deal with them, they started to throw their weight around. A legal opinion was obtained from James Findlay KC to the effect that they could if necessarily compulsorily purchase the land they wanted (ignoring the fact that this would put the farmer out of business). Imagine it! A Norwegian company building windfarms off Norfolk with its Chinese and Australian buddies, killing sea birds, and keeping its fingers crossed that a pond with some islands 400 miles away might encourage some of the endangered birds to nest there while totally ignoring the destruction of a viable local business. In theory, they could build a windfarm off Land’s End and compulsorily purchase land in Shetland for “mitigation” measures that they have decided might (or might not) help undo some of the harm created by their vast industrial development.
That’s the stupid bit; the scary bit is that foreign companies can potentially use compulsory purchase powers in Scotland. Ask most members of the public and they can tell you that local authorities and other public service providers; utility companies; Scottish Government Agencies and Non-Departmental Public Bodies; and Network Rail have CP powers but most people do not know that whilst Private-sector companies do not hold compulsory purchase powers themselves, they can work in partnership with an “Acquiring Authority” to deliver projects deemed to be in the public interest. How anyone can believe that building a pond in Scotland to compensate for birds being minced in England is in the public interest defeats us. A foreign owned firm going to the lengths of obtaining a KC’s opinion to confirm that it had CPO powers, which it considered using, against the owners’ wishes should ring alarm bells given the huge number of “renewable” energy projects already in the pipeline and with many more to come.
It’s utterly insane. Will someone please make it stop?
Mark Hodgson
Scotland Against Spin
20 June 2025
Mark’s full article can be read here
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