Offshore wind farm scrapped due to fears over birds
Not a news day goes by without some controversy or other linked to wind-farms. I didn’t know I disliked the idea of them until one was proposed in my own backyard. I can still see the logic underpinning their development, by why do they linger so unpleasantly in some people’s (mine included) mind’s eye? This article tells us:
Plans to extend the world’s biggest offshore wind farm, the London Array in the Thames estuary, have been scrapped due to fears it would harm seabirds, in the latest blow to the government’s hopes for the industry.
In further setbacks on Wednesday, another massive project was scaled back and a leading executive suggested that turbines were unlikely to be manufactured in the UK under current policy – raising fears that overseas firms will remain the main beneficiaries of Britain’s heavily-subsidised industry.
London Array was opened last summer, with 175 turbines sprawling an area of almost 40 square miles off the Kent coast and generating up to 630 megawatts (MW) of power – enough to power 500,000 homes.
Developers had been planning a second phase that would deliver more than 200MW of power, with an estimated 56 new turbines across a further 15 square miles.
But London Array said on Wednesday it was abandoning the plan because of concern over the impact on the red-throated diver, a bird classified as rare or vulnerable by the European Commission