News / Gussie raises hopes of tunnel cash
SHETLAND might persuade Brussels to help meet the £300 million cost of building four tunnels to its main islands by arguing it will reduce carbon emissions, according to the council’s European spokesman Gussie Angus.
Earlier this month the council endorsed its policy to prepare a robust business case to construct fixed links to Bressay, Yell, Unst and Whalsay over the next 20 years.
However councillors acknowledged that in the current financial climate it would prove difficult to raise funds for such an enormous building project.
Last week Mr Angus attended a meeting of the Conference of Peripheral Maritime Regions in Normandy last week where he discussed Shetland’s ambitions.
On Wednesday he told his colleagues that he had been advised at the meeting that the best way to raise money from Europe would be to argue that tunnels would significantly reduce Shetland’s carbon footprint.
“Forty per cent of Shetland Islands Council’s emissions are due to ferries and if we could demonstrate that by replacing these with fixed links and thereby reduce our emissions commensurately, we may be able to secure European funding on that basis,” he said.
Mr Angus called for the chair or vice chair of the council’s infrastructure committee to attend a CPMR meeting on maritime transport in Spain on 15 April to take the matter further.
“We may get nothing out of it, but if we don’t ask we won’t get,” he said.
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