January 4, 2008
Scotland
Scotland
Wind farm protestors on Lewis are still confident that the large scale developments will NOT get the go ahead, despite the Scottish Government’s plans to construct a sub sea cable which is crucial to the projects.
Local wind farm protestors said this week they are not at all surprised that plans for a sub sea cable from Lewis to the mainland have been included in the Government’s long term plans but they still believe the industrial plans will not go ahead.
Vice-Chair of Moorlands Without Turbines, Iain Macleod said they were not at all disheartened to hear that the interconnector was in the pipeline and did not draw the conclusion that this would mean a green light for the Lewis wind farms.
“I don’t think this means that the wind farms are a foregone conclusion. At the end of the day it is a company and not the Government who will take this forward. I can’t see them (the Scottish Government) approving any of the wind farm applications, one of them is out to public inquiry, another has been buried somewhere. The interconnector has always been part of the Government plans.”
On the other side of the Minch, there was also some unrest at the news the Scottish Government could be considering the interconnector as part of their future plans.
A spokesperson for the Ullapool based group Highlands Before Pylons said that they were not aware that the interconnector was part of the Government plans. However they added that Westminster was still in charge of transmission and that any such plans would have to go through Ofgem.
Speaking to the Stornoway Gazette website yesterday local MSP Alasdair Allan said that the inclusion of the interconnector in the Government’s plans did not imply anything either way about the Lewis Wind Farm applications.
However some have drawn the conclusion that the willingness of the Scottish Government to construct an interconnector does mean that they are leaning more towards approval of the large scale projects planned for Lewis.
It is expected that a final decision on the wind farm application will be made in the near future.
By Michelle Robson
4 January 2008
URL to article: https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2008/01/04/protestors-confident-that-wind-farm-plans-will-not-go-ahead-despite-sub-sea-cable/