Wild Land News no 68, Spring 2007

COMMENT- Windfall gains Article

It would have been difficult to escape the debate about renewable energy over recent months. The arguments rage in the press over the Lewis windfarm, while, closer to home for most people, turbines sprouting from hillsides around the Central Belt have changed many a familiar view.

Just before Christmas, news coverage was given to a report by the German Energy Agency denouncing wind farms as too expensive and inefficient. With over 15,000 turbines, Germany has more wind farms than any other nation worldwide, yet the report concluded that it would have been better to target energy efficiency and to equip fossil-fuel power plants with modern filters.

Not surprisingly, our own Department of Trade and Industry was quick to insist that the report "does not directly translate to UK circumstances", and that although it recommends that Germany should focus on energy efficiency, the UK had been doing this "for some time".

Such a statement can only produce a hollow laugh from those of us who see little evidence of it in our everyday lives. In his new book "Heat - how to stop the planet from burning", George Monbiot laments our failure in so many departments - for example, our inefficient houses and the lack of incentives for builders and occupants to improve them. Monbiot acknowledges the role of renewable energy, but as part of a much wider initiative to reduce carbon emissions by 90%.

With man-made climate change now acknowledged as a reality rather than a hypothesis, politicians steer a muddled course around what they know they should do and what they realise would be electorally disastrous, simultaneously assuring us of their green credentials while planning for airport and motorway expansion.

We have commented before in WLN on the way the energy debate has concentrated so much on the generation rather conservation of energy. More generation, of course, is synonymous with economic growth and prosperity, while conservation might seem to imply shrinkage and austerity. Development means profits for someone, and there is one aspect of this that is particularly irksome.

When the debate about wind energy began seriously in Scotland in the mid 1990s, we were told that the going rate was between £1500 and £2200 per turbine per annum into the pockets of the landowner as rent, and we believe it is many times greater than that today. No landowner can claim to take the credit for the way the wind blows over the hills, yet he can make a handsome profit out of what is simply a natural phenomenon.

This ought to revive the whole debate about who owns natural resources - a debate that began in the early days of the Scottish Parliament with the feudal reform legislation but which is still unfinished business. MSPs across the board recognised in principle the need to safeguard the public interest in the land resource, but Parliament has so far failed to give effect to it by capturing land values for the public purse through appropriate fiscal measures. The result is that a wind farm on private land means cash in the bank for the landowner in the form of enhanced land values, but at the expense of the taxpayer.

The tercentenary of the Act of Union has re-opened the arguments about separatism and the old grudge about revenues from Scottish oil leaking south of the Border. But the politicians who make the most noise seem happy to allow revenues from "Scottish wind" to haemorrhage into a few private pockets. We might berate the power companies that build the turbines, but at least they have to work for their profits. The landowner on the other hand, does nothing - his is the most literal windfall gain.

If only there was a financial killing to be made out of energy conservation there might be more interest shown in it!