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THEY are celebrated on Gigha as the "Three Dancing Ladies". The trinity of turbines, which have earned the 150 islanders a profit of £100,000 in their first year of operation, have come to symbolise that remote community's renaissance after 300 years of decline. Willie McSporran, chairman of Gigha Heritage Trust, says the islanders are delighted. Now there is talk of others.

But in several other parts of rural Scotland, from Lewis to the Borders, the wind turbine has become a symbol of bitter division over the past five years. Many are outraged by the prospect of a windfarm being established within their locality. With extraordinary passion they rehearse one dire prediction after another, from the destruction of the crucial tourist industry to city-centre levels of noise pollution and the decimation of golden eagle populations.

But others can view windpower as the key to local economic and social regeneration. In Kintyre, a majority of residents was said to have supported ScottishPower's proposals for the windfarm site on the 1490ft Beinn an Tuirc, in the middle of the peninsula.

Opponents accept the need to do something about climate change. But they reject the idea that the only answer is more and more large wind farms with ever larger turbines.

Last week a new campaign was launched calling for a moratorium on windfarms in the Highlands, where six farms with a capacity of 200MW are already operating and at least another eight are approved or under construction. But this came within days of a poll showing that 73% of people in the area said that climate change would be an important issue when deciding how to vote.

The growth of windpower has indeed been remarkable in Scotland. Windfarms were largely unknown until about five years ago. Today they can match almost 80% of the total power generated by Scotland's 82 hydro schemes, most of which have been in operation for more than 50 years. Wave power, meanwhile, generates only 0.6 % of hydro's total, and tidal nothing at all.

At present, there are 42 windfarms with a total of 700 turbines. There are 19 currently under construction and a further 32 in the pipeline, the figures covering three turbines and upwards. But some of those schemes are massive, with 181 turbines proposed for the north of Lewis and 200 for Shetland. If every project being considered was to be realised, there would be 5000 turbines across our landscape.

Many see this as a mad dash for wind. Much of their frustration is currently focused on the proposed 400,000-volt transmission line from Beauly 136 miles south to Denny, on 600 pylons up to 213ft high, costing £320m. This is being considered by a public inquiry in Perth, which is shaping up to being the longest and most expensive in planning history.

The line, if approved, will carry all the extra electricity that will be generated by all the windfarms across the Highlands and Islands, and more than likely the giant developments proposed for the Western Isles and Shetland.

But none of that extra power is needed in the Highlands and Islands, which saw major investment in hydro. Nor is the area guilty of the environmental pollution heralding the climate change which alternative energy production is supposed to counter.

No community benefit has been proposed by the developers Scottish and Southern Energy (SSE) and ScottishPower, who have refused to discuss even the possibility of undergrounding the cables in the most sensitive parts such as the Cairngorm National Park.

Such was the concern over the threat windfarms posed to the Highland landscape that Highland Council last year passed a strategy for windfarm development which effectively limited major development to three "preferred" areas in the east Highlands. But there would also be "possible" areas for more modest proposals for single windfarms, including some on Skye.

Across the rest of the Highlands there would be a presumption against major development, although small community-owned schemes would be supported.

The council had decided it had to prepare its own strategy back in 2005 because, despite repeated requests over many years, the Scottish Executive had failed to produce a national strategy for renewable energy development.

Four months after Highland produced its strategy, the Scottish Executive presented updated policies which rewrote its earlier guidance from 2000 to local authorities. It ignored the issue of major upgrading of power lines such as Beauly/Denny to carry renewable energy.

Local authorities were not given any individual or regional targets to guide them on the number of onshore windfarms they should have. Councils were required to set out how they would deliver their contribution to the 6000 MW target from all renewables by 2020, but the Scottish Executive said that this was not a cap. There was no mention of the visual impact that future offshore developments would have and what associated onshore facilities they would need.

There was no guidance on the impact windfarms should have on wild land or on national scenic areas, or on the cumulative impact of several separate windfarms in one particular locality. It didn't suggest how windfarms were supposed to fit in with other energy technologies. Local authorities felt let down.

One senior rural councillor told The Herald: "It appears we are being expected to decide how best to save the planet. The government in London and Edinburgh come up with targets. It is left to the private sector to come up with projects in whatever order profit dictates. It is then left to councils to try to control the resulting free-for-all. Even if ministers give the final decision on the largest projects, the official approach still makes no attempt to consider how hydro or tidal should fit into the picture. At the moment it is just wind, wind, wind. If we are really fighting to save human existence on this earth, surely it merits the government being a little bit more hands-on. It has been an extraordinary abdication of responsibility hitherto. Energy may be a reserved matter, but planning and the environment are not."

Such frustration is now widespread within the rural population. At a hustings in Kingussie last week, close to where the giant pylons on the Beauly/Denny line would be built, one local woman said it was "absolutely outrageous that there is no national joined-up thinking" over issues such as windfarms, national parks, power lines, tourism and landscape. "There is nobody integrating the whole thing."

She is not alone in her thoughts. Bill Wright, director of the Association for the Protection of Rural Scotland, says there is a desperate need for a national strategy. "We need a Scottish energy strategy. It is the biggest issue of our age but Scotland's landscape is also absolutely vital to the health, wealth and well-being of us all. We desperately need to increase our generation of renewable energy, but we must find the balance between wind, tidal, wave, biomass and hydro which allows us to best protect our landscape at the same time. The only way we can do that is if we develop a national Scottish strategy. To date that simply has not happened, and it is something the new executive must address."

But Jason Ormiston, chief executive of the industry body Scottish Renewables, argues that a lot of the concern about windpower is misplaced: "We all want to see more wave and tidal power projects coming forward, but it is still early in the developmental phase of these fledgling technologies. We still don't know how successful they will be, so to apportion shares now to these technologies could be almost a hostage to fortune."

He doesn't accept there was an unseemly rush for wind and is satisfied that there is enough regulation to ensure that only "good wind farms" are built. It also had to be remembered that most windfarms only had planning permission for 20 to 25 years, adding: "After that you will find while some windfarms will be made more efficient, others will be removed from the landscape. They are not here for ever."

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Blades putting island in a spin
Nowhere is the debate over a windfarm more heated that on Lewis. There are three major windfarm developments proposed for the island, but the one by Amec and British Energy (Lewis Windpower), for 181 turbines to the north and west, is the most emotive.

Calum MacDonald, the former Labour MP, even identified his support for it as one of the main reasons for him losing a seat at the general election.

It is again an issue in the Scottish parliamentary elections. Labour's Alasdair Morrison, who is defending a majority of just 720, is a passionate supporter although he doesn't want to see it imposed on any community against the local will. His main rival, the SNP's Alasdair Allan, wants a referendum on the issue, but the party's three councillors were part of the clear majority on Comhairle nan Eilean Siar who voted to recommend that ministers give approval.

Much of the 1990s was taken up agonising over a superquarry in Harris; now the councillors are desperate their community does not miss an opportunity that could see around £6m a year in benefits, not to mention the 300-plus estimated jobs.

But the councillors representing the communities where the windfarm would be sited are passionately opposed. Their constituents are convinced that the turbines, which would stand taller than the Forth Bridge, would ruin their island forever and the claimed economic benefit would prove chimeric.

They point to 17 measures of island opinion that have recorded consistent opposition to the windfarm since 2004.

What the parties say

LABOUR
Seeks to boost rural development through technology, improved public transport and services. Views onshore wind power, sensitively sited in partnership with communities, as crucial to ambitious targets for renewable energy, although other green technologies would be developed to supplement it. This would require the necessary grid infrastructure to be in place.

SNP
Wants to invest £98m in renewable power with a focus on community and household generation. Would involve communities more in renewable energy decisions and back establishment of community energy companies and trusts. Seeks carbon-reduction targets of 3% per annum and cutting emissions by at least 80% by 2050. Would offset the carbon impact of major government projects.

CONSERVATIVES
Plans to promote the use of micro-renewables through their £12m annual eco-bonus scheme. Would seek a review of the Renewable Obligation subsidy scheme to reduce windfarms and promote other large-scale renewable technologies such as wave and tidal. Wants a moratorium on locally-opposed onshore windfarms until a national location strategy is in place.

LIB DEM
New climate and recycling targets: no new nuclear power; 100% renewable electricity from investment in wave and tidal power by 2050; reduction in energy demands, investment in energy efficiency, micro-generation and local power, making 40,000 homes a year energy-friendly; increasing recycling rates to 70% by 2020; reduced carbon emissions with four-year targets.

GREEN
Wants a minister for sustainable development and climate change. Wants an action plan to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 4.5% year-on-year to achieve a 30% reduction on 1990 levels by 2010, 70% by 2030 and 90% by 2050. Wants local authorities to assess their carbon emissions and set reduction targets.

Plans a £100m climate challenge fund to support local initiatives.

SSP
Will campaign for a special commission to develop a carbon-rationing scheme with the dual aim of driving down greenhouse emissions by at least 3% a year and redistributing resources to the less well-off. Proposes a nationally co-ordinated energy plan, involving major investment in sustainable energy and energy conservation, including 100% grants for home insulation.

SOLIDARITY
Solidarity supports land-based windfarms where sensitively sighted, but wants to end profit-driven over-concentration on this one technology by creating a publicly owned not-for-profit national renewables company.

Would take Forest Enterprise into public ownership.

12:04am Thursday 26th April 2007

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