Scout Moor has received planning permission to add a further 14 turbines to its current site of 26 making it the largest onshore windfarm in England.
Peel Energy and United Utilities requested 16 extra turbines but only 14 have currently been approved with the other two pending.
Rossendale Borough Council gave the go-ahead, which will now be referred to the government who have the power to “call-in” the decision for further debate.
We’ll be interested to see how the government reacts to this after having ended wind farm subsidies and trying to push for both fracking and nuclear power development.
There has still been some resistance – the council received 125 objections from residents and two petitions with more than 200 signatures – amid concerns that the new turbines will impact negatively on the natural beauty of the area. They would rather have the wind farms offshore.
Jon England of Peel Energy explains the difficulties behind this:
“The UK is quite a highly populated country. Offshore is one of those areas which moves it away from communities but you are going to increase costs. If you increase the cost of construction of these sorts of developments you are going to increase the cost to the consumer.”
A sensible argument further solidified by the fact that these extra turbines will generate renewable energy for more than 21,000 homes and bring in excess of £11m to the economy of the sub-regional area.
We can only see this step towards renewable energy as a good thing. For more information on renewable energy, call Business Juice on 0800 051 5770.