Community Fund – Greener Leith – June Update

After months of waiting, Greener Leith and PEDAL finally received some bad news from the Inverness Planning Officer regarding our wind turbine project near Inverness in the Higlands. He has recommended not to approve turbine on grounds of visual impact.   There are also issues with interference of the local airport radar.  We are still looking into how this may be resolved.  An appeal would be costly but might still get us the desired outcome. We believe that the visual impact could be overcome, the radar interference however would be a much more complicated problem to resolve and could take years.

Another issue is that the subsidies for energy generation of this kind are set to come down, which might make the project less financially viable.  All in all it is a great disappointment to everyone, considering the hundreds of volunteer hours that have gone into this project.

In the next few weeks we will be seeking advice from our consultants how to proceed and get a sense of whether an appeal could be successful.  It will then be up to both boards to decide whether to give it one final go..