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Wind farm worry
Credit: The Scotsman | 04 October 2013 | www.scotsman.com ~~
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Many thanks to Tom Peterkin for informing the public of the Shetland bombshell (3 October).
At a judicial review of the Shetland wind farm Lady Clark of Calton said the Shetland wind farm application was not competent because Viking Energy did not have a licence under the 1989 Electricity Act.
Looking at the list of licensees on the Ofgem website and the exempted persons on the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) website it is hard to see a name operating in Scotland.
How many wind farms have been erected or are going through planning without the developers having a licence? I suspect very many are illegal. This primary UK legislation has been overlooked.
There is now a legal argument as to whether the 1989 Electricity Act just applies to Section 36 and 37 wind farms which go straight to government or whether it applies to all wind farms over 10MW decided by local councils. The wording seems quite clear to me and I would not like to be the Scottish Government’s lawyer.
Presumably to avoid liabilities, companies often form a new company for each wind farm. There have also been a lot of people jumping on this lucrative, subsidy-ridden bandwagon.
In order to protect the public, I hope Ofgem and DECC will do a rigorous scrutiny of those who will no doubt be queuing up for licences. What of the wind farms built illegally?
Celia Hobbs
Peebles Road
Penicuik
Niall Stuart of Scottish Renewables (Friends of The Scotsman, 3 October) showed the true colours of the renewable energy sector when he refers to our beautiful countryside as “empty land”.
While to many Scots our wild landscape is there to be filled with sublime views populated by rare birds and wild animals he sees it as a wasteland to be filled with ugly wind farms and biomass factories.
Alan Black
Camus Avenue
Edinburgh
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