Europe's largest windfarm is to be built alongside the M74 in south-west Scotland after Scottish ministers approved plans to erect more than 150 turbines on surrounding moors. The £600m project is likely to produce enough electricity to power more than 250,000 homes by the time it is completed in 2011, and is well over twice the size of Europe's largest existing windfarm, at Guadalajara in Spain.
The approval was announced yesterday by Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister, at a world renewable energy congress in Glasgow, although it later emerged that Salmond and Scottish executive officials had exaggerated the scale of the project, by quoting the maximum legal limit for the windfarm. The SNP leader claimed the windfarm would have a 548MW capacity, capable of supplying electricity for 320,000 homes.
The power company behind the Clyde windfarm, Scottish and Southern Energy, said it actually planned to install 152 less powerful wind turbines which would generate 456MW, approximately a fifth less than claimed by ministers. The turbines – each 125 metres from ground to blade tip – will be built in two large clusters joined by a long string of towers between Moffat and Biggar in South Lanarkshire, positioned alongside the line of the motorway.
The programme was welcomed by environment campaigners as evidence that big onshore windfarms were economically and politically viable. Doug Parr, chief scientist with Greenpeace UK, said Scotland was at the forefront of exploiting renewable energy sources. Jason Ormiston, chief executive of the Scottish Renewables Forum, said similar projects were needed if the UK and Europe were to meet ambitious renewable energy targets.
