Tuesday, 22nd April 2008
Stevenson welcomes refusal of Lewis wind farm
Dear Sir,
I applaud the Scottish Government’s decision to refuse planning permission to the Lewis wind farm. Destroying deep peatland, as would have been the case on Lewis, would create more carbon emissions than it would ever save.
The previous Labour/Lib-Lab Executive had no coherent strategy for wind energy, simply offering lucrative inducements to power companies and land-owners which led to a stampede to erect giant turbines. Hundreds of applications are still in the planning pipeline, many of them in wholly inappropriate locations which would threaten endangered flora and fauna and industrialise some of Scotland’s most spectacular landscape.
Peat is a global carbon sink, storing millions of tonnes of CO2 during the tens of thousands of years the peat is formed from rotting tress and plant material. The first thing a contractor does before building a giant windmill on peatland is to drain the area, thus releasing all of the stored CO2 into the atmosphere. The peatland is also subsequently destroyed as a carbon sump, stopping any further carbon storage.
Taken together with the construction of mammoth steel towers, huge glass-fibre blades, vast concrete foundations under every turbine, borrow pits, drains, connecting roads, overhead powerlines and pylons, the carbon footprint from every windfarm built on deep peat far exceeds any environmental saving it may aspire to.
The decision to refuse approval for the Lewis windfarm is hopefully the first of many such decisions. Similar applications for giant windfarms on deep peatland on Dava Moor (Grantown on Spey), and Kergord Valley (Shetland) and in many other locations should all be stopped. Wind energy certainly has a role to play in a diverse renewable energy mix, but it must be properly planned and sited.
