Giant Wind Farm Could Power Edinburgh
Edinburgh could be powered by a huge offshore wind farm under new proposals from Mainstream Renewable Power.
The wind farm would consist of as many as 130 turbines and could be installed 30km north of Dunbar. The wind farm would connect to the National Grid through East Lothian.
If it was to go ahead the wind farm would be able to generate enough green electricity to power up to 335,000 homes. A cable would come from the wind farm just south of Torness and would connect further inland at Crystal Rig wind farm in the Lammermuir Hills.
Despite the potential for the wind turbines to generate green electricity there are concerns amongst people in Dunbar of the environmental impact of the hub and the threat to marine wildlife.
The secretary of Dunbar Community Council, Kate Thomas, said “We raised concerns about the environmental impact of the turbines particularly with marine life and birds, but this is an early assessment they are carrying out that has yet to be concluded. There were not too many concerns generally, but it is early days for the project and until they have submitted a planning application they can’t really go into much detail”.
It seems one of the problems of sources of renewable energy is that they tend to be in areas where there’s a lot of wildlife and often the concerns of the local population include how the renewable energy generation will impact on the environment and the native wildlife.