Highlanders have the right to be angry over explosion of wind farms

The National

5 hours ago

Quite a result for a never previously convened group of volunteers sitting on powerless community councils. But was it a step back for the green transition, a step forward for local democracy or a bit of both?
Five hundred people from 56 community councils – representing almost half the Highland population – gathered to highlight the 1305 wind-related infrastructure projects that are either built or going through planning in the Highlands.
No-one's denying that's a small avalanche.
The big questions are: who is the energy for? (probably not Scots); who benefits financially? (certainly not Scots); who gets to decide? (absolutely not Scots), and how much does net-exporting Scotland or the energy-hungry UK actually need? (Fa kens).
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It seems Labour and the SNP are bodyswerving all these vital questions, and Highlanders, despite their reputation for feudal cap-doffing and learned silence, have finally snapped, got angry and got organised.
So, are they just a bunch of climate-crisis-denying Nimbys? I've been making a film about this unprecedented revolt over the last week and visited folk in straths and glens from Strathdearn near Tomatin to the Dornoch Firth near Strath Oykel.
I'm sure there are people who simply hate turbines and are opposed to net zero. I didn't meet any of them.
I did meet people from glens with five, seven, or even 13 wind farms already in place who are being told to accept the same again. Without any say. Without any meaningful income. And without the highest energy bills in Europe getting one penny cheaper.
They must also watch while those existing wind farms switch off in high wind because the grid can't take their energy. We pay for those constraint payments, and if they are common for existing turbines, how will the new wind farms deliver?
(Image: Getty Images)
Furthermore, wind farm applications go through planning piecemeal, with complex documents that take hours for community councillors to download and a lawyer's mind to dissect. So far, every application has been approved by the Scottish Government – despite occasional rejection by Highland Council and even a Scottish Government reporter. It feels like a total fait accompli and normally calm people have become stressed, angry, upset and determined not to let this pass.
I'm sure some distant pointy heids thought wind farms accepted since 2007 meant Highlanders would be a soft touch. Au contraire. It's a case of once bitten twice, not just shy, but adamant – enough's enough.
We met one veteran community councillor who wanted a conversation with the companies, SSEN and the Scottish Government about the totality of wind farms planned for each glen: 'We could negotiate and approve the ones that are completely uncontroversial and try to change or just veto the ones everyone opposes.'
If something as reasonable as that isn't even thinkable, what are we saying about local democracy? If Scotland is to house practically all the wind infrastructure for the whole of Britain without any benefit in bills, what does that say about the supposed union of equals? And if all of this happens without opposition by the planning authority, the Scottish Government, we can only assume that they are 100% on side.
Or that they worry more about denting the high levels of inward investment to Scotland by placing any restrictions on electricity infrastructure? Or that their green targets and position ahead of the UK will be dented? If so, well done.
Every Tom, Dick and Harry (the spivs and speculators from Alex Salmond's era) has a wind company and land on the east coast of the Highlands – near the grid upgrades and the freeports – sitting pretty for the moment when the contracts for difference are awarded and the wind bonanza really begins.
No wonder British Energy Minister Michael Shanks declined the invitation to attend the Inverness Convention along with Scottish Energy Minister Gillian Martin and SSEN – the private power company charged with deciding pylon routes and the location of turbines, battery plants and sub-stations.
Labour's Western Isles MP Torcuil Crichton did attend and argued for councils to become co-developers of wind cash thereby making money for local services. If it can be done in Stornoway, he argued, why not on the mainland? But he also made no apologies for the huge wind energy targets his government will push through whether local communities like it or not. The audience was not amused.
SNP MP Graham Leadbitter drew grumbles for sidestepping responsibility, saying planning is a Holyrood matter and the SNP don't run Westminster. True but unhelpful. SNP MSP Maree Todd prompted snorts of exasperation when she said she was furious about the size of local energy bills and fuel poverty. Fine – why did the SNP not support locational pricing then?
And her MSP colleague Emma Roddick was almost shouted down after saying she felt as powerless as the audience and declared the main problem is pitifully low levels of community benefit. They certainly are inadequate – but local opposition has moved way beyond that. Tory MSP Edward Mountain received a roar of approval for saying: 'We in the Highlands are being sacrificed on the altar of net zero. And we need to stop energy companies trying to bribe local communities.' It's supremely ironic.
THE Tories are getting ready to clean up in Highland seats in 2026, even though the current situation is almost 100% their fault.
Who privatised the energy industry in the 1980s, placing strategic decisions in the hands of private companies like SSE and private operators (many of them the state-owned companies of our European neighbours) – the Tories.
Who created a wind energy desert in England that will now be filled with Highland-produced energy – the Tories and their decade-long turbine moratorium south of the border.
Who created a devolved settlement that handed energy to Westminster, not Holyrood, unlike every other devolved or federal system – Labour.
Who created massive, remote councils like Highland, which has the biggest landmass in the world – the Tories.
Who created toothless community councils as a sop to towns, villages and islands when their genuinely local councils were abolished – the Tories.
And who's been the implacable opponents of 'Mugabe-style land raids' or for anyone else the overdue process of real land reform that would stop absentee millionaires owning land and taking land use decisions over the heads of local communities – be that for the green transition or any other 'worthy' cause. Yip – the Tories.
They've produced chronic disempowerment. Labour have produced the 'ambitious' green energy targets – now set in law – driving the Highland windfarm expansion. And yet it's the SNP who are taking the pounding.
Why? Because voters expected them to reverse the tide, stand up for communities, argue, wheedle, deal and protect – and they haven't. Doubtless, some will argue the Scotland Act means they can't.
That answer may be right. It may be good law. Great accounting. Satisfactory box-ticking – but it's terrible politics.
The Scottish Government believes it must rubber-stamp whatever energy demands the British Government makes of rural Scotland or ... what?
If it's a fight where the Scottish Government backs Highland communities, starts a long-overdue process of decentralisation, produces and share an actual strategy and challenges Westminster to do the same and forces Keir Starmer to own an unreconstructed broken, Thatcherite energy market where Scots will never, ever get cheaper bills – then bring it on.
Meantime, c'mon the communities.