Renew On Line (UK) 49

9. Mini-Hydo project blocked

The £6m 3.55 MW mini hydro project planned by Highland Light and Power for  Shieldaig/Slattadale (see Renew 148) has been rejected by Scottish Executive.  Highland Light and Powers project director Jock Robertson said he was ‘very disappointed that the Scottish Executive has seen fit to overrule the expressed desire of the local community and the Highland Council’  He added ‘It is particularly saddening that the decision seems to have been taken without any kind of precedent, and that the Executive has decided that the opinions of the environmental lobby and non-elected quangos were of  greater importance than the needs and desires of the local community and democratically elected council’.

He felt that this could have‘serious implications for the development of similar schemes in the future’ and wondered what the implications were for the Executive’s target of  generating 40% of Scotlands electricity from renewable sources by 2020.  He concluded that the people of the highlands deserved  to be heard: ‘If the Executive continues to ignore them, and the council that represents them, the Highlands will no longer be a place for sustainable communities to thrive: it will become nothing more than a playground for the leisured elite’. 

Biofuels push

In Feb. Lord Carter, who is a vice-chairman of BABFO, the British Association for Biofuels & Oils. & Oils, tried to introduce an amendment to the Energy Bill calling for a ‘renewable transport fuel obligation’ on fuel suppliers,  requiring them to sell 1% of biofuels  in 2006 increasing  by 1% p.a.  until  2010.  More in Renew 150.

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