Sir Donald Miller, the former chairman of energy giant ScottishPower, has attacked the plan to build Europe's largest wind farm on Lewis.
In a letter to The Herald, published today, Sir Donald claims the total cost to consumers for wind power could far exceed the amount for a mix of nuclear, coal and gas power stations.
He writes: "For a 400MW wind farm on Lewis, the extra cost to electricity consumers would be more than £60m per annum, a figure which, I would suggest, is far in excess of any benefits to the island's population." He also suggests the wind farm will impact negatively upon tourism.
Sir Donald's remarks are a response to an open letter to Jim Mather, Minister for Enterprise, Energy and Tourism, published in The Herald on Monday. Letter signatories - including Stephen Boyd, assistant secretary of STUC and Iain McMillan, director of CBI Scotland - insisted the £500m project was vital for the area's economic future.
Sir Donald's letter adds: "There are less-quantifiable costs to society, in general, for the loss of visual amenity and for the damage to the environment. Part of these costs will be reflected in a reduction in tourist activity. Surely it would make more economic sense to support, directly, investment in infrastructure, transport and industry to create permanent job prospects at a fraction of the cost and at the same time preserve the landscape and tourist industry."
Island officials are seeking a meeting with Scottish Natural Heritage in a last-ditch attempt to save the wind farm plan. Councillors want to see if the agency will change its approach to European environmental directives.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article