Letters / Windfall profits should be used to bury overhead lines
In your article about the proposal for the overhead lines between Gremista and Kergord going to the full council, you say that the developer has spoken of the increased cost of burying the cables.
Feedback on overhead power lines proposal opened up to full council
If Viking [Energy wind farm] was operational now, SSE would be selling the output for about £1m per day. The additional cost of burying the lines would be covered in about a week.
Tingwall, Whiteness and Weisdale Community Council has argued at every stage that the proposed lines are an eyesore. The two sets of twin poles are taller than all the existing lines that we have on Shetland and the people of Veensgarth will look out onto a forest of poles.
I know that SSE will argue that the lines are run by a different part of the business to the wind farm and that it is regulated by Ofgem, but, at the end of the day, it’s the same owners and the same shareholders.
SSE’s wind farms will make them hundreds of millions of pounds of unexpected, windfall profits this year because of the high prices.
It doesn’t seem too much to ask that a tiny fraction of that should be used to prevent another blight on Shetland’s landscape.
Andrew Archer
Chair of the Tingwall, Whiteness and Weisdale Community Council
Whiteness
