If this application were to succeed it would result in environmental, cultural and socio-economic vandalism on a massive scale. It’s hard to see how approval of such a damaging scheme could show anything other than contempt on the part of the Scottish Government for the affected communities and the environments in which they live (exemplified by the fact that the Scottish Government's own account of the consultation events for the draft Plan shows that none was held on Colonsay, Mull or Iona).
The community councils for the affected areas, the Iona Community and Visit Mull and Iona have explained these damaging effects eloquently and cogently in their objections. In so doing, they have repeatedly identified instances of where the applicant’s documentation fails on procedural grounds, underplays or ignores major adverse effects, relies on inadequate and misleading ‘analysis’ of socio-economic impact on areas dependent largely on tourism and makes no meaningful assessment of construction noise on people or on wildlife. Explicit guidance from SNH (now NatureScot) that any development should be at least 35km from Colonsay and Islay and that turbines should be limited to a maximum height of 200m has been ignored: the proposal is that the development be 12.4 km from Colonsay with turbine heights of up to 335m. The daytime visual impact of turbines a third of a kilometre high with blades flashing in the sun and the destruction of the dark night sky with artificial lights is recognised, even by the applicant, as having major adverse effects on the islands’ inhabitants and the visitors on whom the local economy depends.
It’s hard to conceive of a worse site for such a massive industrial development: that it will be highly damaging in multiple ways is not contested. Therefore, the only justification for it is the assertion that it would contribute to the fight against climate change. In this respect, proponents of wind, including the applicant, frequently state that “homegrown” wind-generated electricity is cheap, clean and will provide energy security. In reality, it is none of these things. It’s certainly not homegrown because practically everything needed to construct wind turbines and the grid system required to transport the electricity to where it’s needed is imported from other countries (notably China).
And adding ever more wind power doesn’t give us energy security. Quite the opposite because wind’s intermittency problem gets worse as grid penetration increases: the more you rely on intermittent wind the greater is the need for the various highly expensive storage schemes, like pumped hydro and batteries. Enormous substations are being built across Scotland to ensure that the voltage remains stable and power flows can be managed. And because windfarms are geographically dispersed with low energy-density, a great deal of new transmission and distribution infrastructure is needed; not to mention gas power stations to prop up the system when it’s not windy. It is the overall system cost, in addition to the cost of the turbines themselves, that makes wind energy one of the most expensive ways of generating electricity. The more wind is added, the more the system costs go up, which is why the UK has the highest industrial electricity prices in the developed world. Constraint payments paid to wind farm operators when there is too much wind in the system exacerbate these costs.
And it is particularly galling when the profits go to overseas companies, in this case the Spanish company, Iberdrola, although this is not unusual: a report by the thinktank Common Wealth in 2022 revealed that nearly half of UK offshore wind capacity is controlled by state-owned or majority state-owned foreign entities. Orsted, majority-owned by the Danish government, and Equinor of Norway top the list with 20% and 9% respectively. They’re followed by state-owned groups in Sweden, Italy, China, France, the UAE, Ireland, Germany, Japan and Malaysia, with the UK coming in 12th. As an example, the Berry Burn Wind Farm near Forres is owned by a company named Wind UK Invest Ltd – which sounds good until you realise that it is 51% owned by Norwegian state firm Statkraft; and the remaining 49% is owned by the Chinese government, through a shifting web of offshore companies based in Europe and the Caribbean and currently in the direct control of a company based in the British Virgin Islands, which of course is a notorious tax haven.
So, not homegrown, not secure, not cheap and not benefiting UK consumers. What about clean? Because of its low energy density wind-generated electricity requires huge quantities of copper, aluminium, steel, concrete and critical minerals, including rare earth elements; far more per unit of electricity generated than the equally low carbon system of nuclear power. Mining is one of the most environmentally damaging industries, and the requirement for various critical minerals carries with it human rights abuses, including child labour.
The mining and processing of the rare earth minerals required in direct-drive turbines is highly energy intensive and uses a range of hazardous chemicals which produce large volumes of toxic and radioactive waste. China supplies most of the world’s rare earth elements and the town of Baotou, Inner Mongolia, is the heart of China’s operations. There is no effective treatment of any of the pollutants, which are simply released into the environment. The infamous Baotou ‘lake’ consists of a highly toxic and radioactive sludge which is seeping into the groundwater. The human cost is seen in unusually high rates of cancer (particularly in children), osteoporosis, skin and respiratory disease. And a community that can no longer grow any food because the ecosystem has been poisoned.
The profligate use of resources to build turbines and all the associated infrastructure, and the serious chemical and radioactive pollution resulting from critical mineral mining and processing seriously undermines the ‘clean’ claim. Even the savings in carbon emissions are questionable when whole system calculations are done, a point made in the document ‘Islay Community Council objection to MachairWind – Annex: Claimed Climate Benefit explainer’.
But what about ‘clean’ in the sense of reductions in carbon emissions by displacing fossil fuel (mainly gas) use? The applicant states a generating capacity of 2GW. Assuming a capacity factor of 40%, this would give an output of 7,008 GWh per year; and assuming a carbon intensity for gas power stations of 350 tCO2 per GWh, this would give savings in CO2 emissions of 2.45 Mt per year. Global CO2 emissions amounted to 37.8 Gt per year in 2024, equivalent to 4.32 Mt per hour. The savings in CO2 emissions as a result of MachairWind operating would therefore be roughly equivalent to about half an hour of global emissions.
This simple calculation does not take into account the considerable emissions resulting from construction, operation and maintenance and decommissioning (figures for which are provided by the applicant), and therefore greatly overestimates the CO2 savings. And of course new wind farms are not necessarily displacing gas: because Scotland’s wind capacity greatly exceeds demand, new wind farms will frequently be displacing wind rather than gas. Another way of representing this is that that the annual CO2 savings are equivalent to 0.00648% of global emissions. In other words, if we had 100 MachairWind farms the reduction in global CO2 emissions would still be considerably less than 1%; not much of a contribution to the fight against climate change!
The question to be asked is whether such savings in in CO2 emissions outweigh the environmental, financial and socio-economic costs, together with the myriad other serious adverse effects on the lives of the people who would have to live with MachairWind. I think not and urge that this application be rejected.
Objection & Analysis from Andrew Walker
Breakdown of the calculations available on request to the author.