Scottish gov OKs Europe's biggest onshore wind farm
Windbaggery
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Scottish ministers today greenlighted Europe's largest windfarm.
The 152-turbine, 548MW Clyde wind farm will comprise clusters of turbines straddling the M74 motorway near Abington in South Lanarkshire, providing juice for 320,000 homes. The £600m project will create 200 jobs during construction and 30 full-time operational posts once completed.
Announcing details of the scheme, First Minister Alex Salmond told the World Renewable Energy Congress in Glasgow: "The Scottish Government has an ambitious target to generate 31 per cent of Scotland's electricity demand from renewable sources by 2011 and 50 per cent by 2020. Today's announcement makes it virtually certain that the 2011 target will be met early and represents a significant milestone on the way to achieving the 2020 target.
"Scotland has a clear, competitive advantage in developing clean, green energy sources such as wind, wave and tidal power. We have put renewable energy at the heart of our vision of increasing sustainable, economic growth."
Scotland's wind power plans are already well advanced, with the Eaglesham Moor development, south of Glasgow, promising to deliver 322MW from 140 turbines by 2009.
The Scottish parliament does, however, take pains to consider the possible environmental impact of such installations, and back in April kicked into touch a proposed 181-turbine farm on the Isle of Lewis. ®
COMMENTS
Solar Cell Manufacturers giving them away?
"... the environmental damage from manufacturing solar cells far outweighs the input you get from them in the UK, (and certainly in Scotland FFS) and they will decay to a point of non-usefulness far before they have produced more energy than their production consumed."
I am curious about the environmental damage from solar cell manufacturing. Although early semiconductor plants often dumped their waste inappropriately, today the waste treatment is much better (I should know, I have worked in the industry in Silicon Valley for nearly 40 years). The probable time to decay to non-usefulness is certainly many decades, and probably centuries, and since the payback time is now under 20 years, the energy consumed in their production must be very cheap if it is less than their lifetime production! Unless the manufacturers expect to lose money on them.
Even Scotland is sometimes sunny.
Nu-Clear waste not an issue?
Of course nuclear is the answer! The fact that the half-life of waste from the new generation of nuclear reactors is measured in millions of years is inconsequential. We just need to find somewhere geologically stable enough to last that long, create Ma scale construction methods and jobs a gud un!
We could also chuck in all the waste thats been kicking around in the existing nuclear power stations that we hadn't worked out what to do with, ditto the military waste and the radioactive bits of decommissioned plants that we'll generate over the years.... hmmm, its going to have to be a massive hole, Coventry perhaps?
Sarcasm aside, I'm genuinely interested in what the pro-nukes think the answer is to this problem?
correction
"most of those props aren't spinning."
typo - sry
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