I have been slowly becoming more anti-onshore windfarm over the past few years, particularly in remote places.

I completely get the fact that we need to sort our energy issues out, but it seems to me that we are destroying the few bits of ‘wilderness’ that Scotland posses to produce more energy, rather than the more complex but ultimately more sustainable alternatives (mainly use less!)

Last nights BBC story was so badly presented, with the landowner claiming that at Eaglesfield there are so many mountain bikers coming to ‘ride round the windfarm’ that they would need to be ‘putting in a visitors centre’ and that the proposed Monadhliath windfarm would be a tourist attraction!

http://www.savemonadhliathmountains.com/

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-20027075

whatever the rights and wrongs,they are not like nuclear power stations,easily removed and no permanent damage seem a small price to pay.

i do agree a lot could be done to conserve energy,and reduce unnecessary use, maybe we have to accept that cheap energy is no longer an option ?

Eaglesham (if thats what you mean) is very popular with cyclists. Not mountain bikers as such, but there is a massive network of traffic free cycling to do there and its a kind of landscape you would’t normally get such easy access into. The turbines themselves are amazing things to be amongst, an amazing soundscape an spectacle. If you’re determined to hate them you’ll hate them but to my mind they’re just as enjoyable a family day out as a forestry plantation.

In my neck of the woods as much landscape is given up to windfarms as to open cast coal mining (that is to say – a lot of each) . I find both just as interesting to be honest but I think popular opinion would favour one over the other and the open cast doesn’t have a cafe and interpretation centre.

I tend to think that they’ll be there for a generation (no pun intended) until we sort out a permanent solution to providing energy for the population.

There’s this lovely fiction that the Scottish landscape is natural – it is really already very altered by man. The bare, treeless mountains are as much a man made landscapes as a quarry or opencast mine.

Aesthetically, I think turbines are lovely – happy to see more of them.

Can’t stand them. Happily they’re removable, so the only damage we’ll have really done is waste a bit of money and maybe killed some birds. Nothing to get too het up about.

They’ve just erected a load near me. I quite like them, generally, but the ones here really dominate what was previously a beautiful view. ‘s a shame.

I wonder idly if it’s because they’re relatively new things. No-one complains about pylons, and they’re ugly monstrosities blighting the landscape for miles.

Here’s us riding around some turbines

I love the turbines. They’re presently putting more in. Good. I can’t see people objecting on the view-spoiling front as its a northern post-industrial landscape full of disused quarries and derelict mills

There’s this lovely fiction that the Scottish landscape is natural

Hence the ‘wilderness’ in quotes…
But there is a diffence in an over grazed glen, lacking trees, with ancient by ways etc, and hulking huge turbines than can be seen tens of miles away..

I do wonder that they’d be less visually intrusive if they painted them ‘drizzle grey’?

Or woudl they just get more bird strikes?

http://www.blog.scotroutes.com/2012/10/like-windmills-of-your-mind.html

I think they’re ok in the right place. Eaglesham moor looks the better for them and individually I think they are quite elegant. However, I do think that we are in danger of switching off the tourism cash cow by building too many and in some iconic locations. Allt Duine would be one of those.

i quite like the turbines, don’t have a problem with them at all. just wish they would turn eaglesham into an mtb centre.

They are quite intimidating when you get up close to them. Personally I would prefer more off-shore wind and definitely more tidal/wave because I think there is more scope to generate the power we need with higher power density (wind turbines can be bigger off-shore as less restrictions).

If the conditions above and below the water match up then build a combined site to reduce power cabling costs.

seosamh77 – I believe that MTB trails are in the plans, but I agree that there is a great opportunity for a good centre close to that large population.

Like them.

Here’s us riding around some turbines

That looks familiar.

Wasn’t the Highlands described as “a devastated landscape” by Frank Fraser Darling, back in 1947

Can’t imagine there’s much, if any natural land in the UK at all any more. A few scraps surviving on the margins maybe. If anyone can advise otherwise please do?

Its easy, take away their subsidy and that’ll solve it 😉

The disclosure comes ahead of a long-awaited government announcement to cut the size of the subsidy, which benefits the big energy companies but is added on to household electricity bills.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/windpower/9400147/Wind-farm-subsidies-to-top-1bn-this-year.html

Take away the subsidy for nuclear too, then what will we do?

Dear Lord! Have you read some of the comments on that Telegraph article?

Windfarms are a fascist conspiracy 😯

Cougar – they will indeed look familiar. We had a walk up to the new ones round your neck of the woods last week. They’ve gone up quick!

Surprised that ‘advertising’ hasn’t been plastered on them , just to give them a more urban feel.

An argument that says ‘it is spoiled already, so it is OK to ruin it some more (and cut the (tourism) hand that feeds us off at the same time)’ just does not add up with me.
They *do* have their place, close to the cities where supply is needed, on land of marginal travel tourism value. Even more they have a place out to sea.
Even more, solar panels on every house, super insulation on every house, micro and pico hydro on so many streams and burns have minimal environmental and visual impact – why are we not pursuing these with fervor? The answer is because a big wind turbine project works for a big company like RWE and co. The other stuff is local, small and complex – not ideal for them. Once again it is big business and shareholder profit before common sense.

No-one complains about pylons,

I did, a lot.

Take away the subsidy for nuclear too, then what will we do?

Too bloody right…

The term that gets used nowadays is “wild places” rather than wilderness, deliberately taking account of the reality that the Scottish landscape has been profoundly altered by human influence.

Do people taking the line “the landscape’s already altered, so what’s the problem” not see the inherent contradiction between bleating on about the need for renewable energy on the one hand, and a plan to obtain it that involves damaging the environment yet further. It’s hard to convince people they should pick up their rubbish on mountain tops, or not leave dog shit lying about when you’re standing within sight of a huge earthmover ripping vast amounts of blanket bog out of the ground, merrily releasing all the CO2 trapped there back into the environment.

Somewhere along the line, we need to stop indulging the lazy thinking that “the end justifies the means” if we want to resolve our problems within the context of a coherent environmental ethic.

The answer is because a big wind turbine project works for a big company like RWE and co. The other stuff is local, small and complex – not ideal for them. Once again it is big business and shareholder profit before common sense.

+1

Are you really describing Eaglesham as’wilderness’? This is the same Eaglesham windfarm that i can observe from my office window next to Central Station in Glasgow’s city center? It’s countryside on the edge of Scotlands largest city, but definately not wilderness.

I’m from the west highlands and when they were proposing to build a windfarm outside my village the local paper was always full of letters from people outraged at how they were going to ruin the landscape, massacre the local bird population etc, etc. The funny thing is almost all of those who objected were writing from far away places and didn’t want their holiday views to be spoilt.

The other day I drove past a wind farm in California with 3200 turbines. It was one of the most striking and spectacular things I’ve ever seen. Goes on for ever in every direction.

piemonster – Member
Wasn’t the Highlands described as “a devastated landscape” by Frank Fraser Darling, back in 1947

Daniel Defoe described the Lakes as

“the wildest, most barren and frightful of any that I have passed over in England, or even Wales itself; the west side, which borders on Cumberland, is indeed bounded by a chain of almost unpassable mountains which, in the language of the country, are called fells.”

wild places?

I beg to differ, its a managed landscape and has been used for or to sustain various ‘industries’ over the last x millenia.

You could flood a few more valleys to get some hydro?

I don’t have a problem with the Eaglesham development; it seems like a sensible place to site a wind factory if we need to have them.

I have a far bigger problem with the proposed development at Allt Duine, which is going to have a massive visual impact on the Cairngorms NP, provide minimal investment or jobs in the local area, and damage a considerable section of the Monadhliath blanket bog in the process. Added to the damage already being done by the installation of the Beauly – Denny powerlines, I have a growing concern that the current SNP administration has very little concern for the longterm conservation of Scotland’s wild places, and little understanding of their value either for tourism, or the physical and mental wellbeing of the Scottish population.

Ceebug – in my opinion, Eaglesham is perfect as a location. However there are still some places where the visual impact threatens tourism. VisitScotland have just come round to thus view too, so I expect to see them putting up more objections than previously.

Even more, solar panels on every house, super insulation on every house, micro and pico hydro on so many streams and burns have minimal environmental and visual impact – why are we not pursuing these with fervor? The answer is because a big wind turbine project works for a big company like RWE and co. The other stuff is local, small and complex – not ideal for them. Once again it is big business and shareholder profit before common sense.

More likely, it’s because micro generation doesn’t work in many or most cases, the payback time is very, very long. A large turbine is so much more efficient than lots of little ones.

Druidh, good stuff, hadn’t heard anything about that, would be good if so. I could start with that, and finish up with Cathkin braes before an easy we roll down the hill to the house or pub!

Any linkage for plans or anything?

There’s this lovely fiction that the Scottish landscape is natural – it is really already very altered by man. The bare, treeless mountains are as much a man made landscapes as a quarry or opencast mine.

Very true.

Onshore wind does need an element of sensitivity to placement. I quite like the windfarm just south of Thurso, it really suits the landscape and light in that area. However I’ve worked on some ridiculous locations, usually in England, far too close to nearest property and with very low capacity factor. Sites that were rejected first time round are being reapplied for now, and I heard that there were something like 800 wind farm applications queued up in the SCottish planning system!

Offshore is the future baby!

Dumfries is about to see a lot more being built

This development which has been on the cards for some years and has recently seen some civil works in the forest, construction hut bases and roads being altered/widened.

These will be visible all the way from Moffat to Hamilton eventually.

Biggest issue is the number of trees being removed from these areas and not being replanted to balance out the carbon creation issue, never mind future wood supplies 🙄

http://scotland.wwf.org.uk/what_we_do/tackling_climate_change/

djglover – there are surprisingly flew glens still suitable for large scale hydro, although we are seeing a lot more of the smaller “run of rover” developments.

You do raise an interesting point though. Many of the lochs – and even the dams – built for hydro power have become an accepted part of the landscape. One wonders if these developments would have had such an easy time of it if they were only being progressed now.

in my opinion, Eaglesham is perfect as a location. However there are still some places where the visual impact threatens tourism.

aye true, sticking wind farms in the middle of the cairngorms I could understand the objections, and would probably agree.

But I was up at whitelees at once before hey built the windfarms in about 2006 looking for some trails in the area and it was a fairly dull bleak area that only consisted of fireroads, so no great loss to position it there i think. need to take a wander up soon actually out of curiosity.

Eaglesham/Whitelee proposals…. http://unchainedmag.co.uk/whitelee-mtb-project/

There’s already a cafe, toilets, showers and bike parking. The possibilities are clear!

Go up on a clear day – the views are well worth while.

cheers druidh

I quite like them. They can enhance the landscape.