Benvironment

Heavens, it feels like I’ve been chipping away at this piece for weeks now but FINALLY I’ve got my reccy of Europe’s largest windfarm finished :)

Okay, it’s not the biggest yet but it soon will be once the 152nd turbine is erected.  The site will then supposedly generate 350MW, enough to power around 279,000 homes.  Well……that figure is apparently open to interpretation, as between the Scottish Govt website, Scottish & Southern Energy (SSE) and Alex Salmond I’ve seen three different statistics designed to wow the public, ranging from 200,000 to 320,000.  Doesn’t anyone know for sure?  Or is that perhaps the point, that the variability of wind means you can never actually know for sure?

Anyway, the first turbines came online in June this year, and meant the power station had begun generating.  The first of the windfarm’s three sections should be finished by the end of this year, and the rest by 2012.

The Clyde wind power station straddles either side of the M74 motorway just north of Moffat. From its northernmost point near Abington it sprawls south for a staggering 18km over rolling hills.  It is around 8km from east to west at its widest point.  It is HUGE!

And……as seems to be the way these companies operate these days, once permission is granted and work nears completion they start making noises about further expansions.  In this case I believe in the region of 60 more turbines are being considered.  Quite outrageous really, considering the original application was for more than 200 turbines, which was then reluctantly whittled down to 173 before the developer was beaten down to 152.  Should SSE get their way then the power station would be the biggest of its kind in the WORLD!!  First Minister Alex Salmond must be wetting himself at the prospect.

Thankfully there are some in government who do find this extension difficult to stomach.  MSP Karen Gillon has questioned the manner at which this extension is being sought:

“It is my view that at the time of the public inquiry an application should have been made that took into account the full extent of SSE’s ambitions for the site. In not doing this, and by acting in this underhand and piecemeal fashion, they have damaged their reputation and certainly caused me to question their conduct”

Unfortunately, Karen lost her seat in 2011’s Scottish elections and her successor, Aileen Campbell so far hasn’t been in the job long enough for us to tell what she thinks.  So far we’ve only seen the usual ‘the community must be consulted’ type comments, which could mean anything.  So we will watch with interest how this goes down in the new parliament.

Still…..that’s all to come in the closing months of 2011.  For the moment however, there is much activity in Clydesdale.  Here’s a summary of what I saw when I paid the site a visit in July this year…..

I started by driving down the B7076 towards Nether Howecleuch.  If you’re not expecting to see wind turbines on this road then they come as quite a shock.  They are EVERYWHERE!  Most were standing without the blades attached, which apparently is because they are interfering with the radar tracking station at Leadhills and construction has been halted.  The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) and the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) will need to build a new facility as a result, but as it won’t be operational until 2012 they are apparently working with SSE towards an ‘alternative temporary solution’……but short of leaving the blades off, one wonders what on earth they can do?

The bustle along the Clyde Valley and especially along the B7076 is palpable.  The scale of the development hits you not only because the wind turbines are looming overhead at every turn, but because there are seemingly endless work entrances, articulated lorries, contractor cars and ‘SLOW - LORRIES TURNING’ signs:

Eight entrances in all are spread across the development, each in a constant buzz with temporary buildings, enormous car parks and a steady procession of vehicles heading up & down newly bulldozed access roads, churning up the exposed dirt into giant plumes that blow across the hillsides.  The bare hillsides you now see in place of the large forest plantations are stark to say the least:

Now, there’s no love lost between me and conifer plantations.  They’re inhospitable to much of our native wildlife, they’re dark, depressing, drain peat of its water content and in some instances they’re every much a blight on the landscape as some wind developments.  But one wonders how much soil and sediment pollution will run-off into watercourses as a result of this felling?

I’m guessing all these trees would have been felled at some point anyway as most of them are in plantations, but they’re not usually cleared in such a wholesale fashion across such huge areas.  I don’t recall ever seeing such widespread deforestation in this country:

It’s in Elvanfoot however where you get the best idea of what the finished site will look like, as the turbines south of the village have got the blades fitted.  I can quite vividly remember from last year the view south as you cross the railway.  Green hills, dark forests, a rural landscape.  I’m not sure what kind of landscape it is now…….but ‘surreal’ probably sums it up:

I then drove to Glenochar, as I wanted to get a bit of altitude and see just how extensive the Clyde development is.  I was last in that glen in July 2010, when nothing was amiss at all.  I distinctly remember seeing an enormous number of lapwings and oystercatchers, but don’t remember seeing a single turbine.  Just rolling green hills interspersed with plantations.

Regardless of what you think of conifer plantations, they’re now gone from the hills south of the A702 to Dumfries and there are over 50 turbines in their place.  I can’t recall seeing any view where the prospect has changed so comprehensively in such a short space of time.  It looks completely different.  It looks industrial.  It looks busy:

I chatted to a nearby resident who has lost their view to the turbines.  They said they could live with the turbines now that they’re there, that they went up incredibly quickly in the space of about eight months, and that their biggest concern was the clear-felling of the forests.  They were worried the bare hillsides would just be left without replanting or landscaping.

There were numerous houses and farms immediately beneath the cleared forests, and the Glenochar turbines in paticular appear to be very close to a few farms.  Certainly less than 2km, which is the distance generally regarded as acceptable in the planning process……

…..although once out in the countryside and away from towns, both councils and developers tend to play a bit loose & free with that measurement…..’on a case by case basis’ <coughs>.  I don’t suppose the concerns of a handful of residents carries much weight when faced with generating power for 200,000 homes…..or was it 320,000 homes?  I forget.

Anyway the resident said they couldn’t hear the turbines and I got the impression that they expected to be able to, especially given the recent BBC documentary ‘windfarm wars’ where noise was given special attention.  I suspect this is chiefly because this resident is too far away from them, but also because the glen is too much of a wind tunnel.  I’ve walked through the Bowbeat windfarm south of Edinburgh and it was VERY noisy beneath the turbines themselves, but strangely it was still very noisy when I was standing in a sheltered hollow almost 1km downwind of them.  The whooshing noise made by the wind was unbelievably loud even from that distance.  Once out in the open glen again with mobile air they were harder to hear, so evidently their noise potential increases if you live in a sheltered spot with turbines nearby.

After a good chat with that resident I headed up the aptly named Watchman Hill in the easternmost Lowther Hills.  From there you can look across the glen to the westernmost turbines.  It was also the perfect spot to see the entire 18km extent of the site, although as I’ve already mentioned, the northern end is marked only by tracks along the ridges at the moment…..but give it time.

Still, the full panorama that I’ve since cobbled together of the Clyde development in its current state is pretty nifty and I think conveys the scale of the thing very well.  Take a look.  

After I’d had a good ferret about the Clyde site I went back to the car…..and then headed off to climb Tinto, the highest point in Lanarkshire.  The hill sits just off the northernmost extent of the windfarm so I thought I’d go up there to see how things look from up high.  You can read about what I found at:

Europe’s largest windfarm from the highest point in Lanarkshire.

The photos in this piece also feature in a small 20-photo tour of the Clyde windfarm, which I’ve had to split over two photo albums as you can only do ten at a time on this thing:

Photo Tour of Europe’s largest windfarm - Part One

Photo Tour of Europe’s largest windfarm - Part Two

You can also see the panorama of the Clyde windfarm that I took from Watchman Hill, and patched together in Photoshop.

If you made it this far thanks for sticking with me.  Until we actually see something for ourselves it’s just a remote concept that has little to do with us……and we can happily support large-scale wind developments from afar, happy we’re doing our bit for the environment but remain completely oblivious to the cost.

Regardless of their views on renewable energy, people should at least see what’s happening so that they understand what it’s costing our country, and then they’re free to make up their own minds.  If people do see the extent of these developments and don’t give a shit afterwards, that’s fair enough.  Personally though, I think more of us would care about what’s going on if we only knew about it.