from Sunday Herald, 17 February 2013
The Scottish Conservatives have been accused of “hypocritical
posturing” for opposing wind farms when three of their MSPs together stand to profit
by at least £50,000 a year from them.
The Sunday Herald can reveal that Jamie McGrigor, the party’s’ environment spokesman, Alex Fergusson, the Scottish Parliament’s former presiding officer, and John Scott, the current deputy presiding officer, are all expecting to receive a substantial annual income from wind turbines on or near their land.
They have declared their involvement in the latest register of MSPs’ interests, but political opponents and environmental groups say that it conflicts with the new anti-wind farm policy adopted by the Scottish Conservatives last month.
A report launched by the party leader, Ruth Davidson MSP, demanded a big cut in the number of wind farms planned on land, and for wind subsidies to be slashed by 50 per cent. It also called for councils to be given the power to impose a one-year moratorium on any new wind turbines.
“This hypocrisy from the Tories is a classic case of do as I say, not as I do,” said the SNP MSP, Chic Brodie, a member of the parliament’s Economy, Energy and Tourism Committee.
“They might be vocal opponents of Scotland’s renewable energy potential in public these days, but they remain perfectly content to personally profit from wind turbines.”
Brodie argued that renewable energy offered Scotland massive investment and thousands of jobs. “No amount of hypocritical posturing from the Tories can change that fact, as these MSPs clearly recognise for themselves,” he added.
McGrigor, the conservative MSP for the Highlands and Islands, received an initial fee of £5,000 and is now expecting to be paid between £5,000 and £6,000 a year for 20 wind turbines planned by the German power company, RWE, on his Ardchonnel sheep farm, near Dalmally in Argyll.
Fergusson, the conservative MSP for Galloway and West Dumfries, gets between £40,000 and £45,000 a year from 52 wind turbines run by Scottish and Southern Energy on his land at Hadyard Hill in South Ayrshire.
Scott, the conservative MSP for Ayr, has a deal which enables Spanish-owned Scottish Power to use his farm near Girvan to access its 60-turbine Arecleoch wind farm in South Ayrshire. The deal is understood to be worth more than £5,000 a year.
Dr Richard Dixon, the director of Friends of the Earth Scotland, called on the Scottish Conservatives to abandon the “narrow anti-wind agenda” being promoted by a few prominent party members. “The Tories are clearly divided over wind farms,” he said.
He accused the party of drawing up its latest energy policy statement “in secret” without consulting key stakeholders. “Most people in Scotland think wind farms are a good thing,” Dixon continued. “Anyone who believes that anti-wind policies will significantly boost the Tories' electoral fortunes is making a big mistake.”
Niall Stuart, the chief executive of the industry body, Scottish Renewables, said: “I hope those conservative MSPs who have first-hand knowledge of the sector can perhaps explain to their colleagues that onshore wind is the cheapest and one of the most effective sources of renewable electricity we have.”
One of the architects of the Scottish Conservatives’ anti-wind farm policy, the MEP Struan Stevenson, is planning to launch a book in Edinburgh this Thursday attacking the “green energy myth”. He bills it as “a clarion call for the tens of thousands who have seen their lives and landscapes blighted by industrial wind turbines.”
The Scottish Parliament is also due to debate the Scottish government’s targets to boost renewable energy later that same day. The parliament’s energy committee, chaired by the conservative MSP, Murdo Fraser, concluded that the targets were “achievable”.
The Scottish Conservatives insisted that there was “no problem” with wind farms as long as they were appropriately sited with the agreement of local communities. “These are personal matters for the MSPs involved, and do not dictate Scottish Conservative party policy,” said a party spokesman.
“That policy does not oppose wind farms outright, so accusations of hypocrisy are wide of the mark. We are simply concerned, as many are across Scotland, that the SNP is moving too fast in approving significant numbers of wind farms at the expense of Scotland’s countryside.”
When asked to comment on his party’s energy policy, John Scott said: “I really haven’t got anything to say about that.” McGrigor and Fergusson did not respond to requests to comment.
That these Tories are happy to be part of a massive subsidy grab simply indicates that they are just as unconcerned as other landowners and 'developers' about the environmental damage (to birds and bats, in the main) and the social injustices of a system of turbine introduction that forks out massive sums of money to rich landowners at the expense of ordinary electricity consumers.
What is surprising is that anyone on the supposedly 'green' side of the argument would support the current wind turbine policy in Scotland when it is environmentally damaging and socially unjust. Might it not be that this is yet another symptom of what Murray Bookchin called "a dismal retreat into ideological obscurantism and a 'mainstream politics' that acquires' power' and 'effectiveness' by following the very stream it should be seeking to divert"?
Where is the story about the birds? The Spanish Ornithological /Society, after conducting the first independent survey of bird and bat mortality in Spain, estimated that between 6 and 18 million birds and bats are killed / annum as a result of operating spain's 18,000 turbines. No point in saying domestic cats kill more birds etc - turbines kill raptors and migrating birds as well, threatening extinction of e.g. eagles, vultures etc worldwide. Besides, which, we should be doing all we can NOT to kill birds, rather than excusing future slaughter by pointing to present ills.
Posted by: Farley Bowers | 17 February 2013 at 10:51 AM