Adrian’s family own Ascog Farm on the Isle of Bute, Scotland. The farm is one of very few that is not owned by the Mount Stuart Trust, the ‘Bute Estate’ which describes itself as ‘the custodian of 87% of the Isle of Bute.’
At Ascog Farm, a particularly windy spot close to the Eastern coast of the Isle of Bute, Adrian and his family attempted to develop a renewable wind energy generating scheme consisting of three Enercon E48 wind turbines.
The project was designed to offer a much higher level of community pay-out than is normal. Adrian also told the local councillors that he welcomed community ownership of two out of the three proposed turbines if the funds could be raised (approximately £ million/turbine) to pay for their installation.
A great deal of geographical research went into the Environmental Impact Assessment into the scheme, some conducted by Adrian and yet more by SAC Consulting, the consultancy arm of the Scottish Agricultural College, now part of Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC).
Despite all this detailed work some predictable hostility to the scheme, whipped up locally, and a far from imaginative Landscape Wind Energy Capacity Study (LWECS) conducted by Argyll & Bute Council more or less doomed the prospect of gaining planning consent, even before the plans had been submitted.
Sure enough, the application for wind turbines at Ascog Farm was rejected at planning and at appeal, solely on the basis of views.
Adrian has produced a set of slides covering the whole project, these are shown below.
Adrian presented the slides at Portsmouth’s Pint of Science festival in May 2017 and has since incorporated this knowledge into his teaching, notably on The Green Economy course he designed and delivered at the University of Portsmouth.
Needless to say, since the planning application was refused, global CO2 emissions have continued to rise and no meaningful green energy has been developed on the Isle of Bute.
Interestingly, other communities in Scotland that did bite the bullet and build wind turbines themselves have done rather well out of it!
Perhaps there is hope yet…