ENERGY
Scotland’s new wind farm could help bring down energy bills. Though not immediately
With bills soaring north of £3,500 a year from October, solutions to the energy crisis are top of the agenda. And Scotland is looking ahead of the game.
The country’s biggest offshore wind farm has begun generating power that could make bills cheaper while also slashing emissions. Seagreen, located 16 miles off the coast of Angus, had been in the works for more than a decade.
The first turbine was commissioned and connected to the grid last month. When finished next year, the wind farm will comprise 114 turbines and generate 1.1 gigawatts (GW) of electricity – enough to power about one million homes. It will save around two million tonnes of CO2 emissions annually.
Mary Church, head of campaigns at Friends of the Earth Scotland, said: “Scaling up offshore wind in projects like Seagreen is a vital way to cut pollution and end our reliance on the fossil fuels that are driving climate breakdown and the cost-of-living crisis.”
Until this summer, it was cheaper to generate electricity from gas than wind turbines but that all changed after gas prices skyrocketed. Ami McCarthy, political campaigner for Greenpeace UK, said: “Renewables are now around four times cheaper than oil and gas.
“Rather than attempting to dig up every last drop of dirty, expensive oil, the next prime minister should be investing in the future of the North Sea, which is renewables.”
In recent years, Britain has been ramping up its capacity for wind power, with offshore wind projects previously given the green light to increase capacity from 11GW to 40GW.
The Westminster government
