Almost 90 per cent of Shetlanders back halt or moratorium on energy development, survey finds
A SURVEY of local residents on energy development has highlighted “profound opposition among respondents to the scale, pace and cumulative industrialisation of Shetland”.
Campaign group Sustainable Shetland, which undertook the survey, said the results were a “rejection of the assumption that Shetland should continue to absorb an effectively unlimited succession of industrial developments”.
It has also called on Shetland Islands Council (SIC) to initiate a ‘residents impact forum’.
The survey was sent to every household in Shetland, with people able to fill it in online.
The group said the survey gave people across Shetland the chance to “consider the bigger picture and express their views”.
Sustainable Shetland said only around one in ten people supported most proposed major developments.
Nearly six in ten supported no further development, while almost three in ten supported some developments but not others.
More than four in five respondents believed that Shetland had already made a significant contribution to the UK’s renewable energy needs.
A total of 2,655 survey responses were received – 1,440 by paper and 1,215 digital.
Around 87 per cent of people said they supported a halt or moratorium on further development – the topic of a community meeting earlier this year.
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Nine in ten said they believed that the SIC should make a public case to the Scottish and UK governments for the need for a cumulative impact assessment in relation to energy development.
Nearly 85 per cent also said they were in favour of transmission cabling being laid underground as standard.
There was also a high level of concern shown about the potential health of impacts of acoustic pollution from energy infrastructure.
Meanwhile only five per cent of respondents said that they felt public consultation has a genuine influence over major energy developments.
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Nearly one quarter of respondents said that they were in favour of Viking wind farm in 2010, with 66 per cent not in favour, and 9.5 per cent unsure, neutral or ‘on the fence’ about the development.
In a statement, Sustainable Shetland – which has campaigned against the Viking wind farm – said these type of developments “do not arrive alone”.
“They require substations, pylons, overhead lines, subsea cables, access roads and years of construction activity,” it added.
Also in the mix is battery storage and hydrogen/ammonia plants.
“Each component may be presented as a separate and manageable application, but together they amount to a wholesale industrial transformation of Shetland’s land, seas and communities,” the group said.
The campaigners said a moratorium on future energy development is “therefore important, but it is not the whole message”.
“It is the immediate means of preventing still more development from being consented while the wider question is answered: how much industrialisation has Shetland already been required to bear, what further development – if any – is genuinely necessary, and where must firm limits now be imposed?”
“The support for a halt was considerably wider than outright opposition to every possible development. That shows that concern extends beyond those who reject all renewable-energy projects.
“It reflects a much broader belief that the present developer-led, piecemeal approach has gone too far and must not continue unchecked.”
Sustainable Shetland also said that the survey was something the SIC should have done years ago, adding that its members used their own time and money to “help fill that democratic and evidential chasm”.
“Limits on SIC’s formal planning powers do not remove its responsibility to lead, commission independent evidence, lobby government and represent residents publicly,” it said.
“SIC should establish a permanent residents’ impact forum, place the survey before a public council meeting and take a recorded position on a moratorium.
“Shetland’s MP and MSPs should publish the representations they have made, the replies received and a clear timetable for further action.
“Support for a pause is already a matter of public record; the action taken to secure it should be public too. Much has already been consented or placed in the development pipeline.
“The remaining opportunity to prevent Shetland from being further industrialised through separate, supposedly unrelated consents is narrowing.”
The campaign group also suggested that community benefit and shared ownership do not make up for loss of land, habitats and landscapes.
“Financial payments may change who receives part of the proceeds, but they do not establish that a development is needed, properly located, environmentally acceptable or compatible with the cumulative burden already imposed,” it said.
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