Election letters 2019 / Worried about onshore turbines
In reply to Dave Hammond
I too am extremely worried about VE and onshore turbine construction and I also think it will do irreparable damage to our fragile ecology. I too wince driving over da Scord o Tresta. Is anyone concerned enough here to monitor what Bam are doing? Says it all about VE really. I know there is a peat restoration promise by VE, but given the thousands of tonnes of peat which will have to be extracted for the turbines, roads, quarries, laydown areas, and given the problems we had constructing the Kames road in the 1970s, the thousands of tonnes of concrete bases required for mega sized turbines, the fact that the peat disturbed by the gas plant and stored is very likely to have lost its carbon storage capabilities, this amount of degradation just cannot be managed. We are going to destroy more carbon capturing peat than we can restore, and that is for sure. This was never a green project, being oversized for Shetland and being so far away from where power is used. This was always a money-making project and now that SCT is no longer part of it – it is no longer even a community money making project. We only need enough turbines (and other green solutions), so that we have enough power for our own use, at a reasonable cost to the consumers who would be incentivised to use less and save more. How about a green energy co-op for Shetland? That is something it would really be worth being part of. And other areas of the world can do the same.
If elected I would make sure these developments are monitored, setting up a monitoring group such as SOTEAG which monitors the environmental impacts of Sullom Voe. This group would measure the impacts on the environment and on human, animal and bird health and have the power to shut down the project if necessary. VE’s massive turbines must have an impact on nesting birds and we know that species are threatened, we also know that VE must have an adverse effect on tourism as we will look more like an industrial wasteland than a lonely planet site. I’m also vexed that the people living next to this have been largely ignored and asked to make an enormous sacrifice in the face of the arrogance of the developers.
Yes, we need green energy, but if we had a traffic light rating system for this huge project, I’m not so sure it would rate green. Maybe amber? Maybe red – spending more in carbon than we can ever actually repay.
Johan Adamson
Labour and Co-operative Party candidate
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