Yearly Archives: 2014

An amendment was made to the Town and Country Planning Order 2013, which came into force 17th December 2013. This makes pre-application consultation with the local community a legal requirement for planning applications regarding wind turbine developments, in England. Fine Energy accepted this new procedure with great gusto and we have been consulting with local communities for the past ten months. We did not limit consultation to England, choosing to engage with Welsh communities and, more recently, Scottish communities.

Not a moment too soon it seems. In response to a public petition, the Scottish Government has agreed to prepare guidance on good practice community engagement methods for wind energy development proposals. The current publicity requirements for raising awareness of planning applications is deemed to be insufficient and the Scottish Government acknowledged that it would be helpful to issue guidance. The focus of the petition was on single structures, or a small number of turbines, which are situated onshore in rural areas, as opposed to larger offshore wind farms.

The government is asking stakeholders to comment on the content of the guidance before it is finalised in Spring 2015. The guidance aims to advise local planning authorities, developers and members of the public.

We have had a tremendous response to our consultations and it has given us an opportunity to answer questions, dispel rumours and genuinely engage with local residents. We look forward to reviewing the Scottish guidance in 2015.

Our mission is to reduce the UK’s reliance on fossil fuels and it is great to see that we are not alone. The owners of a farm and family park have taken full advantage of the renewable technologies on offer and now produce 80 per cent of their business’ energy consumption.

We use coal displacement figures to demonstrate the positive impact of wind power and David and Felicity Brown have reduced their carbon footprint by an impressive 58 tonnes a year!

Along with solar panels and a biomass system, the farm makes use of a 10kW wind turbine which means they only draw from the National Grid on very dull days or when there is no wind.

That’s certainly put us in a good mood for the weekend. Let’s hope it’s a windy one!

Fine Energy Edinburgh have been working very hard on a site in Scotland and it was revealed this week that planning permission has been granted! An Endurance E3120 wind turbine will be installed on the land for a duration of 20 years, and the energy generated will be fed into the local distribution networks for use by local residents and businesses.

Wind attracts frequent criticism for being intermittent – the argument being that if we were 100 per cent reliant on wind, there would be times when there would be no energy at all. This is undeniably true, but the fact is that wind is part of the UK’s energy mix, and every kilowatt-hour generated by wind is a kilowatt-hour that does not have to be generated using coal or other fossil fuels.

Our mission is to reduce the UK’s need for power stations and every time a wind turbine application gets granted, we are another step closer to achieving this goal.

Yesterday, representatives from Fine Energy, Norvento Wind Energy UK and Shoreham Port held a public meeting at Southwick Community Centre. This event offered local residents the opportunity to meet the people behind the wind turbine proposal and to find out a little more about the project.

We would like to say a big thank you to everybody who took the time to talk with us yesterday, we have read through the feedback and it is encouraging to see so many of you in favour of renewable energy schemes.

A special thank you goes to John Kapp, Honorary Secretary of Hove Civic Society, who brought a certain sparkle to the afternoon.

Already this year, wind turbines contributed 22 per cent to the UK’s energy supply on one very windy Sunday afternoon – and now that record has been beaten!

With a little help from the tail end of hurricane Gonzalo, wind power set a new record on Sunday 19 August by providing 24 per cent of the UK’s electricity supply for the entire day.

The consistently strong performance saw wind outperform nuclear power from Friday evening right through to Monday morning. In addition, a number of coal plants were taken offline as they were surplus to requirements.

So it seems we have the wind to thank for our Sunday roasts.