Holy Isle Wind Turbines
Not surprisingly we have received quite a few emails about the Holy Isle Wind Turbine proposal which was given planning permission last month. Some were supportive of the proposal, some not, and a small selection is shown below.
From Rory Cowan: I am disappointed to hear that The Voice is in favour of the desecration of Holy Isle. It is my belief that this is a planning disaster for several reasons. Firstly wind is not the highly efficient deliverer of electricity that it is claimed to be. Going around the island where there are wind installations it is interesting to note how disappointing the electricity generation in reality is. Secondly it is interesting to discover how much the generators on the mainland are paid NOT to generate when other mainstream plant cannot be throttled back. Thirdly a far less intrusive way of generating a comparable level of electricity could have been using photovoltaic with battery back-up. There are huge areas of roof and ground area available for photovoltaic ‘farm’ which could have been used, far easier to install, cheaper and far easier to control and which would have been far more appropriate to the needs of the Buddhist community on Holy Isle. Finally if heat is really what they want, what is there to stop the use of heat pumps to pump heat from the water to the land. Relatively speaking there is just about an unlimited source of heat available for heat pumping from the water to the few dwellings on the island. Finally, the observation of the planning officer concerned is that vegetation would help to mask the installation. Well his guidelines specifically prevent him from drawing such a conclusion for the simple reason that vegetation does die and may not regenerate thereafter. Hence the ruling – yet he uses such an observation and at the same time refuses to consider alternatives to wind generation.
Finally, take a visit to Gigha and note how unobtrusive and in keeping with the skyline their wind generators are. NOT!
I do not believe at this stage that we either want or need this on the iconic skyline of Holy Isle. There are better ways.
