Big Corporations plan to smother Galloway, South and East Ayrshire with wind turbines

Big Corporations Reveal They Want To Block National Park so They Can Build Hundreds More Turbines

• Group representing EDF, Siemens, SSE and other mega-businesses set themselves against Galloway and Ayrshire

• National Park would protect region from inappropriate wind farms.

Big businesses have revealed that they want to stop a National Park because it would prevent them from smothering Galloway, East and South Ayrshire with hundreds more vast wind turbines.

Trade Body Scottish Renewables is using the report created to support its response to the Strategic Environmental Assessment to publicly lobby Scottish Government to abandon proposals to create the new National Park.

They say it would make getting planning permission for wind farms more difficult.

The organisation lobbies on behalf of massive foreign owned enterprises like Scottish Power, Energiekontor, Vattenfall, EDF and Siemens who all have an interest in Galloway.

Companies which have plans to build hundreds more towering turbines.

Rob Lucas, Chair of the Galloway National Park Association, said: “It is now absolutely clear that big business has set itself against the communities, the wildlife and the future of our region. People living in the area will be furious.”

“Those who said no to a National Park in the recent consultation have every reason to feel duped because they had not been told what the consequences will be if the Park doesn’t go ahead.

“We have already done far more than our fair share of the heavy lifting when it comes to accommodating windfarms – but these companies want to fill their wallets by smothering our countryside in ever bigger turbines.

“Many of the proposals are completely inappropriate and, even worse, we know from many years of experience that the claims by these businesses that they will bring prosperity are totally empty. The money made from our countryside just goes to shareholders – many of them overseas.

“If these companies cared about the environment they would back, not block a National Park but all they care about is profit.

“It’s time that local people who have been sceptical about a National Park recognise that it is the only way to protect our area and its future and to rally to our side.”

Scottish Renewables own analysis shows that whilst Dumfries & Galloway currently has around 10% of Scotland’s onshore wind capacity it has less than1% of the jobs it reports for that sector. 

Over 90% of the electricity generated is exported to the rest of Scotland and south to England.

Claire Mack, CEO of Scottish Renewables, in an interview on BBC Radio’s ‘Good Morning Scotland’ said the area was “strategically significant for onshore wind … with a lot of the future pipeline able to be developed there. However, a National park designation would impact that ability” but added that “those investments could very well go elsewhere.”

Despite the enormous resources at their disposal, Scottish Renewables chose to base their case on the whole of Dumfries and Galloway whilst ignoring South and East Ayrshire. Analysis by GNPA shows that 16 schemes are already in operation in the largest of the areas looked at in the National Park consultation – over 350 turbines in total and yet Galloway’s economy continues to fall further and further behind the rest of Scotland. 

Claire Mack made the point that onshore wind can be “deployed relatively quickly” and GNPA analysis shows that a further five windfarms are under construction in the potential National Park area, seven are awaiting construction, 10 are in the formal planning process and 14 are at the scoping stage. 

This may be a factor in determining the boundaries of a future National Park in Galloway but it is clear that without designation wind capacity in the area will more than double over the next 10 years.

GNPA is now writing to opponents of the National Park and calling on them to acknowledge that many more wind farms are inevitable if it is not created.