Ruth Davidson MSP - Leader of Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party

Dear Ms Davidson

I received a survey through my door today and have filled it in as requested.

You will see that on question 4. Improving our environment, I have ticked ‘other’ and written in NO MORE WIND FARMS!!!!!

Like many areas in Scotland, South West Ayrshire is now being bombarded with applications for large wind farms and also single/two/three individual applications. I cannot stress strongly enough that we have had enough. Our area has been totally trashed by greedy developers and landowners. What was a beautiful area to live in has become absolute hell. Nobody knows where the next wind farm application will turn up next. I look out over a large wind farm known as Hadyard Hill and it sits at the end of the valley. There are now two applications for wind farms which will be to the side of it. Some of the proposed turbines will tower over our village at a distance of only 1km. So much for the 2km rule. It doesn’t exist! No matter how many objections we get, and even if the planning panel refuse it, we still have to wait for an appeal knowing that the Scottish government reporter will probably pass it. There are two families who have been fighting noise issues from Hadyard Hill for 6 years now and now find that they will be totally surrounded by turbines if these two applications get the go ahead. To make matters worse, SSE is scoping on the other side of the valley for what could be another 80 turbines. All the land around here is owned by farmers and all they see is the money and vast wealth being offered for doing nothing. It has nothing to do with saving the planet and their morals and sense of decency to their neighbours just simply disappears. It has split our community right down the middle. Our valley and village will consist of wealthy farmers and poor residents. Everything my husband has worked for all his life (he is 65) will be for nothing. We had hoped to be able to sell and downsize to enable us to have a more comfortable life in our retirement but that is just a dream now as our home will have been devalued and we will have no profit left. We may also have to live with noise and visual intrusion. We did not move to Scotland for this. The local town of Girvan whose residents will not be affected will want the bribes being offered by the windfarm developer which, incidentally, is our money in the form of subsidies paid to them whether they produce any electricity or not. Scandalous! Hadyard Hill has received more constraint money (money to turn off) than any other wind farm. Nearly £2 million to date. The power cannot be taken away all the time because the grid cannot take it and yet we face more wind farms.

I am now part of a group called Communities Against Turbines Scotland and we represent many people like ourselves in the same situation. Scotland is slowly being covered in turbines and it is not pretty. Our friends who visit always comment on how many more turbines they can see but their comments are not ones of praise. We now have the chairman of the National Trust speaking out and celebrities such as Matt Baker who presents Countryfile saying that wind farms are the biggest threat to the countryside.

I have always voted Conservative and so have many that I am in touch within the groups but I have to say that unless something changes and quickly, I will never vote Conservative again. I am going to vote UKIP in the next election. Parties such as the Greens, Lib/Dems and the SNP have ruined this country and the electorate will not forgive them easily. I really don’t think you have any idea of what the countryside and our stunning landscapes mean to people. Our beautiful area now has no bats, birds and no stunning views left. We used to have bats outside our home and would see them every night but now we have none. We used to have buzzards nesting in our wood but now there are none and we don’t hear them crying out anymore. Wind farms destroy wildlife and when it is gone it does not return. The ecological balance of the area will be changed and the result does not bear thinking about. Rather than saving the planet we are destroying it and it borders on a criminal act.

More pensioners than ever are dying from hypothermia. This is not something any government can be proud of surely? As Nigel Lawson said, if we stopped all this global warming rubbish and stopped all the extra charges that are being added to our bills we could wipe out fuel poverty. Instead of that we get the likes of Chris Huhne saying that people must use less fuel. Some people cannot use less than nothing!! Other have no choice but to use less. They cannot afford to keep warm now.

To date, nobody has grasped the nettle of adverse health effects from living too close to turbines. I have written to Nicola Sturgeon on this subject but have had no reply yet. Other commonwealth countries are beginning to take this seriously and have issued guidelines to developers making them site turbines further away from residents. Australia is leading the way with medical research headed by Dr Sarah Laurie, a Scottish doctor working out there. She also works closely with Dr Amanda Harry from the UK who has also evidence that people’s health is being affected badly by turbines in the Cornwall area. Still the governments of this country ignore this. Who will be accountable when medical evidence finds there are problems?

We could revive our fine gas industry and give jobs back to miners. Build clean nuclear power stations. The technology in nuclear is moving fast and safer methods are getting closer all the time. Stop listening to the Lib/Dems. The vast majority of the public did not vote for them – they voted for a Conservative party. Mind you, we all thought the Conservatives valued things like village life and countryside but we are all shocked. David Cameron is leading the party to ruin. He will lose all credibility if he carries on like this. Many of his own MP’s feel he must do something but instead he carries blindly on even though the engineers and experts say it is wrong. Cynically, people are talking about how his father in law is making enormous amounts of money from turbines and that fact that Nick Clegg’s wife works for the wind industry and now we find that Ed Davey has family with connections in the power companies. Is it a case of lining one’s own pockets?

Alex Salmond has a dream come true with all of this. You are all playing straight into his hands and he will get his independence if things carry on like this. His main manifesto relies on the policy of renewables and the English are funding it for him. When, and it will be when at this rate, Scotland gains independence they will make England pay heavily for the wind energy they import while he will get his energy cheaper using their nuclear.

The rural areas of Scotland are paying a very high price for this policy and we will not let this government off lightly. I urge you to talk with Mr Cameron and I cannot stress enough just how angry and frustrated, not to mention heartbroken, people are in Scotland right now. I think you will find the same in the rest of the UK.

Yours sincerely

Kim Terry

Communities Against Turbines Scotland, Ayreshire

I do though have a counter argument to those that can rise no higher than a catch phrase.

“All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” (Edmund Burke)

I have always said that the death of wind will be down to financial factors rather than anything else. Here in HOLYROOD magazine you will see an assessment of the subsidies. Read and weep!

As previously mentioned the National Grid nearly had a major failure on the 8^thDecember. Since then the DECC (Department of Energy and Climate Change) have finally faced the truth stating “We face significant risks to the security of electricity supply in the medium term”. It admits that the accelerating closure of old fossil fuel power stations, to comply with EU Diktat and ruthlessly pursued by Chris Huhne, Ed Milliband before him and yes, The DECC and “increased levels of intermittent and less flexible capacity” (Wind farms to you

DECC suggests future Carbon Neutral use for light bulbs

and me, again promoted by Chris Huhne and the DECC) could lead to “multiple voltage reductions (brown-outs), and potentially more serious consequences, for example, power cuts affecting millions of homes, creating significant costs to the economy and high volatile prices in the wholesale markets which would likely to impact on consumer bills. This could plausibly be in the second half of the decade”. The fact that industry commentators, including the National Grid, have been telling them this for several years would seem to have passed them by. Essentially by 2015-19, we will no longer be guaranteed to have light when we click the switch or be able to boil a kettle, but we won’t be able to anyway because our lords and masters have ended up making such a cock-up of our energy industry in pursuit of carbon targets that we won’t be able to afford it.

So what is the government or the DECC going to do about it. One might suggest that the best option would be to extend the life of existing fossil fuel plants until such time as a secure energy mix, including the new Nuclear just agreed this week, come on line. There are issues, that since wind is king, the wear and tear on existing power plants coping with intermittent, but favoured. renewable energy is actually reducing the life expectancy of those plants without significant investment. The adherence to a failing EU carbon policy in face of a cataclysmic failure of our grid is the mark of a fool. And talking of fools, we have the answer from the DECC with, I suspect, a little help from the treasury. Essentially no one is building new power stations because of a lack of confidence in the market, and possibly the realisation that the big electricity generators have the UK government by the short and curlies. Essentially if wind can have mega bucks of subsidies, they want some too. The fact that most generators are not UK companies may have something to do with this as the Euro zone staggers from one crisis to another and US companies concentrate their investments in their own economies. Now the DECC have come out with a great wheeze. They will pay energy providers for capacity. This takes away one backlog. What new entrant into the energy field is going to build a 24/7/365 facility if the preference to use intermittent wind reduces his output to 70%. This is a very complicated area where over-capacity is dealt with by the constraints/balancing mechanism which can pay producers an average of £222 per mw not to produce electricity. So it would seem that new power station providers have learnt from the windies. In some cases they sit on both sides of the fence. Heads they win, tails you lose. Not only do they get paid for the electricity that they produce, but also for that which they don’t produce, and pick up a capacity bonus on top. They must employ a few bankers, I hear you say!

Now this capacity mechanism is quite cunning. The generators are required to bid for the capacity in an auction. Lessons learnt from the bonanza of oil and cellular phones. These will take place four years before the capacity is needed allowing four years to finance and build the plant. So the exchequer will pop a few hundred million in the bank from the licences and who do you think gets to pay for this capacity? Yes, got it in one. The consumer; that’s you and I; through our electricity bills. However legislating to provide the mechanism is not the same as implementing it though. Now go back to the start when DECC have at last admitted that we will almost certainly suffer power outages within the second half of the decade, 2015-19. Ministers have signalled that the first auction will be in 2015 with capacity due to come on line in 2019. Talk about shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. Despite these Monty Pythonesque plans, there is no sign that the industry has any confidence and until such time as that may be, the chances of this scheme coming into fruition by the beginning of the next decade are slim. Basically the DECC and it’s new leader Mr. Davies need to pull their digit out and create a policy that instils confidence. Any time soon please!!

One rather concerning aspect to this are the technical difficulties created by a total blackout. If the grid cannot be stabilised at 50mhz, the system simply shuts down to protect itself. The alternative would be a fireworks display that would put Guy Fawkes to shame. Re-starting the system is long and complex as many power stations cannot self start. Dinorwig Hydro has massive diesel generators as have some older coal power stations. But they may be closed by then. Modern power stations rely on a grid supply to power the computers, pumps, valves without which nothing works. Most Wind Turbines rely on a grid supply to start up. That is why unconnected wind farms need generators until their grid connection is made. Obviously the Grid would use it’s best endeavours for this not to happen, although major areas may very well find themselves without power. However no one can forecast the perfect storm. It has happened before both in the United States and in Spain.

So how about that investment? I suggest that it would probably better to invest in some candles, a tilley lamp, possibly a generator and a primus stove. If we really do end up with Armageddon, the share price will fall through the floor anyway as no power means no industrial production!  Oh and a little bit of news for those who think they are immune because they have invested in Photovoltaic solar panels or a wind turbine. When the power goes down, they switch off. In other European countries it is possible to fit a switch that allows the power to continue to be supplied to the house but in the UK, assuming a grid tie connection, this is not allowed. The problem is that should an engineer be working at re-connecting the supply and lots of mini turbines, micro hydro and pv cells were still supplying power to the grid, you may well end up with a deep fried engineer! Not a good idea.

For all actions there is always a consequence!

SSE Visualisation

What position should we take as a Wind Farm site. Hydro has been here for fifty years and therefore I think it logical to use it’s bounty and update it where possible. I have some reservations as to it’s original benefit to Scotland and whilst there is no doubt it lead to the emancipation of the women of the Glens we should also ask at what cost. Iain Thompson book “Isolation Shepherd” tells the story of Strathfarrar before the Hydro and describes the terrible destruction that the hydro wrought. As man always does, we have adapted and accepted it but there are areas of the Highlands now deserted of people where houses once were and families grew up. However it now produces clean cheap power and for that we must salute it. New Hydro has the advantage of being planned away from habitation and being level with the ground does not have the same impact as wind farms. However no one who has seen Mullardoch, Glascarnoch or Cruachan can ever call them a beautiful addition. Certainly the early constructions at Pitlochry were lavished with much attention but Highland ones built later were simply functional and utilitarian. The run of the river systems of the Beauly spoilt an otherwise idealic traditional Highland River. Possibly it improved flooding problems in Beauly but then at what cost. On the whole I take the view that our wild places are under significant threat and we are the custodians of the land to hand on to our children and our children’s children. One stroke of a pen can wreak havoc that can never be undone. It is possible however to work with nature and produce both a practical and ecologically acceptable scheme. We must hope that SSE, should they proceed with this dam, provide the resources so to do. One question that remains over this project is SSE’s barbed comments that they are waiting to see what happens to government support. From that we may deduce that Coire Glas dam may only be built if SSE can tap into the subsidies given to other Renewables as that of a renewable resource. An interesting conundrum. And one that may cost the consumer dear.

The whole Hydro story stems back from the fifties when the Labour MP Tom Johnstone was appointed by Winston Churchill as Secretary of State for Scotland, basically to keep him out of everyone’s hair. It is of note that Johnstone had previously blocked a privately funded Hydro Scheme for the Beauly Area. Hmm!! Hydro faltered and died , not because of the dearth of sites to transform, but due to the lobbying of Gerald Nabaro, MP and the National Coal Board, who saw the expansion as a threat to their industry. At the same time the land owners lost their enthusiasm for new technology as they saw the effect wrought on their lands.

As to this new tranche of Hydro Schemes, we must consider them well. We already have Glendoe, closed for the last year plus after a tunnel collapse. We have Balmaacan under consideration and the massive Glenmorie Scheme. We now have this one a t Loch Lochy. How practical one may ask? Pumped hydro produces large amounts of power over short periods. If this is to balance the intermittency of wind, we must suggest that the 600mw will do little to balance the massive number of turbines planned for the area. If Stronelaig and Balmacaan come on line you are talking of 834mw needed for those alone. As a resident of the area I am well aware that winter high pressure areas can last up to two weeks or more at a time. Fifty hours does not seem much based against those considerations. Also pumped storage relies on cheap coal or nuclear night time electricity to recycle. Expensive wind, off-shore or on-shore, wave or tidal would simply not be an economical option. Although the dam may provide fifty hours of capacity, this assumes two things. One: Mother Nature in her bounty has provided enough water in the hills and two: you have the time to pump it uphill before you need it next. The energy and time to refill a pumped hydro scheme is days if not weeks. These systems are fine for short bursts of power to cover high peaks of usage, like the end of football matches when everyone puts the kettle on. It is dubious whether they are practical to provide cover from wind.

This area is a Mecca for Tourism and yet the picture that Alan Sloman paints on his blog of the disruption we may expect would do irreparable damage to this business’s that rely on tourism in those areas. Looking to the past, at the turn of the Century I have a poster for a daily trip from Inverness in a coach and four to visit Kilmorack Falls at the princely sum of 6/s (7/6d inside). Nowadays we do not get any visitors to come and view the concrete edifices of either the Kilmorack or Aigas Dams and even the Fish Pass is now permanently closed. Anyone familiar with the Mullardoch and Glascarnoch Dam would remark at their foreboding appearance and the damage wreaked on the shorelines. A read of Iain Thomson’s book and you will realise what we lost in the pursuit of energy. When Hydro came to the Highland’s one coal fired power station would have provided the same output. It was a massive job creation scheme. Now we look at Glendoe which was built with mostly East European labour and equipped with German Turbines. When Kilmorack and Aigas were re-engineered about ten years ago it was German turbines and German engineers.   I remember as a boy seeing the great lorries going down the MI from GEC at Whetstone loaded with turbines and electrical gear for every country in the world, packing crates stencilled with the names of far off places: Durban, Dubai, Delhi and so many more. Now we even have to import the cables for the new Hunterston to Wirral undersea line. So, as in the years of the original Hydro, do we really have to sacrifice our lands when one nuclear power station would probably do the lot and 24/7/365.

The economic of wind farms sometimes leave me lost for words. A Norfolk based company has just purchased  a workers transfer boat for offshore wind farms. This £1.5 million boat was produced in partnership with Mercurio Group (Spain) and specifically designed to serve the demands of the North Sea wind industry. Why we have to go to Spain to buy a boat for waters that our own boatbuilders have years of experience of beats me. This is for a five month contract worth £300,000 and providing jobs for three people. Seeing as many engineers working on these wind farms are provided by the manufacturers and developers, that might be the best that Norfolk can hope for. I suspect that the drop in numbers in the tourist industry may well be more than three. One hopes that they get another contract at the end or they are going to have a big hole in their piggy bank!

This is yet another example of UK jobs being exported to the detriment of our indigenous industries. One caveat, a fast boat of a similar design and size was purchased from Australia to provide a ferry in the Western Isles.  It proved totally unsuitable for the job as passengers were thrown all over the place in rough weather. It was withdrawn from service and for a year was operated as a fast transit vessel on Loch Ness. Even there it proved unsuitable in stormy conditions and has now been sold to a new owner in, I believe, Spain. Lessons to be learnt? This new boat boasts a much lighter weight than an aluminium hull but, as an ex sailor, weight equals stability!