Our Press Release - 22nd February 2024
22nd February 2024
Residents of the Fanellan area near Kiltarlity are reeling after receiving some devastating news through their letter boxes yesterday. SSEN map attached.
SSEN’s area for a proposed substation, which was around 60 acres in March 2023, has suddenly grown to be 860+ acres in less than a year with zero public consultation.
That is over fourteen times the size of the site they consulted on last spring.
Only those folk in the immediate area were contacted about this monstrous industrial development that will affect so many more for miles around.
For context the appalling noisy substation at Balblair is 42 acres. Two photos attached.
Fanellan will be over twenty times larger. Comparison map attached.
Sixty acres was bad enough for a quiet peaceful crofting community but this is outrageous and SSEN’s lack of engagement with those so adversely is indefensible.
People and their children live within SSEN’s ‘red line. Crops are grown within their ‘red line’. Trees are standing within their ‘red line’.
How does this happen? How does a company be allowed to become so powerful and so arrogant that they are allowed to drip feed devastating news to rural communities without demonstrating the need for any of it.
SSEN are slicing up their plans with separate planning applications and will be submitting one piece of the puzzle at a time. It will confuse, stress and reduce the resources of those determined to protect their environment. It would appear to be a deliberate ploy to undermine the very communities who are suffering from their industrial onslaught.
SSEN have been asked to submit one complete planning application for each of their intended overhead lines. They have not responded.
While buzz words like ‘Net Zero’, ‘Pathway 2030’ and ‘Holistic Design’ are wheeled out at every opportunity no one – no politician, no industry or regulatory authority representative can or will explain exactly what it will mean for rural citizens or when it will end.
SSEN have already admitted to those who attended their ‘consultations’ that all the new proposed infrastructure was for more onshore wind turbines. At a meeting attended by Communities B4 Power Companies in December last year Ofgem said it was for offshore wind and when corrected simply said: “The Scottish government has its own onshore wind targets”.
ie This is not Westminster driving the horrific industrialisation of rural Scotland. It is to facilitate thousands more onshore wind turbines. It is within the power of the Scottish government to halt this with their 100% devolved planning powers but they won’t.
Why not?
At the same meeting it was revealed that a condition of SSEN’s operating licence was they had to engage in ‘meaningful public consultations’.
They have not and an official complaint is being prepared to send to Ofgem.
Why are politicians of all colours refusing to stand against this multinational and protect their constituents?
Why won’t the First Minister stand by his own words in April 2023 when he said that the Scottish government ‘will not steamroll through or impose on any community a policy that it is vehemently opposed to.”
Communities up and down rural Scotland are being thrown under Big Energy’s gravy train. That is the exact opposite to what Humza Yousaf pledged in the Scottish parliament.
A recent FOI asking for details of former SSE/SSEN/Scottish Renewables employees who had been/were within the Scottish government as advisors, special advisors, on committees and involved in studies resulted in being told that the Scottish government does not hold that kind of information.
They said:
‘The Scottish Government does not have the information you have asked for because the Scottish Government does not keep a track of employees previous places of employment for all Scottish Government staff. Advisers / special advisers are appointed to their position in the Scottish Government by the First Minister, and do not go through the standard recruitment process, therefore our Special Advisers office also do not hold the information of previous places of employment either. ‘
They don’t know who they employ to advise them and are paid with tax payers’ money? That is simply astonishing.
A follow up request for clarification revealed:
In conducting my review, I have searched our records management system using the keywords (“SSE” AND “CV” OR “Curriculum Vitae”) and (“Scottish Renewables” AND “CV” OR “Curriculum Vitae”) and both these searches returned in excess of 40,000 returns.
Forty Thousand returns!
Dare we ask the questions: Who is directing policy and exactly how much influence by those with vested interests is actually being wielded within Holyrood?
Ofgem’s own figures estimate Scotland will need approximately 9GW in peak winter 2042. The whole UK is less than 100GW yet we have 420GW needing a connection to the grid.
Why? For export that’s why.
Who benefits? Not Scotland. Not the consumer. Not rural communities targeted to ‘host’ SSEN’s concrete and steel road show. It’s no longer Scotland’s energy to sell.
It is the global investment companies like BlackRock, Vanguard, State Street and The Ontario Teachers Pension Fund who own SSEN and their parent company SSE. Not Scottish and not even UK based companies.
The Scottish government is backing the destruction of rural Scotland and its communities so privately owned companies with global investors can make obscene profits exporting energy out of our once stunning country.
Communities are joining together to fight back against this injustice to protect the wider environment, homes, health and mental well being.
We demand a moratorium into the industrialisation of Scotland by Big Energy and a public inquiry to examine the needs case for what is being proposed.
We also demand that SSEN ceases all planning applications until their conduct has been thoroughly investigated by the energy regulator and the Scottish government.
***************************************ENDS**********************************************
Communities B4 Power Companies
Attached:
Increased area map of Fanellan from SSEN
Comparison site map in blue and red
Pictures of Balblair substation
CB4PC images
FOIs available on request
Contact:
Lyndsey Ward
Email: cb4pc.press@btinternet.com
Telephone: 07899 035 135
