North Ayrshire Council lead on sound priorities in Hunterston decision

On Wednesday (9th October) North Ayrshire Council voted to object to plans for a major new coal fired power station at Hunterston. This would also have seen the inclusion of a carbon capture and storage system to reduce carbon emissions – a system which, like nuclear waster, ends in storing the captured carbon somewhere for future generations to deal with. Another toxic legacy.

The World Wildlife Fund which, with RSPB, was a key objector, said – and detailed why – that this proposal was the worst they had ever seen. It was unsound, ill-researched and inaccurate and so carelessly uninformed as to have confused the largest bird species in this country, the white tailed sea eagle, with a small garden bird.

Only an idiot would trust a company that could not even get its proposal papers right to go on to carry out the actual operation. In large as in small.

Management and operational carelessness – or pragmatism -  in an exercise of this kind could result in the pollution of the Clyde waterway, one of the most extensive and important waterway systems in the UK.

The company concerned, Ayrshire Power, has no track record. It has been born out of opportunism – seizing on the government’s wish to guarantee Scotland’s energy into the future by using technologies that are as green as possible. This company is a subsidiary of Peel Energy, part of the Peel Group, owned by the tax avoiding privateer and Isle of Man resident, John Whittaker.

Not only does the group owner have no sense of personal responsibility to the country from which he has seized his fortune in land grabs through port acquisitions but his collective business holding has only very recently adopted an approach to  corporate social responsibility. It largely wants no truck with this nuisance aspect of contemporary best practice in business. The appearance of its address to responsibility issues only emerged following a campaign we led on its conduct of its subsidiary, Clydeport, with the community in Loch Striven, drawing attention to its lack of such a policy. Caveat emptor.

North Ayrshire Council’s decision means that Scottish Ministers will now have to hold a public inquiry before they can make a final decision on whether or not to proceed with the project proposed by Peel Energy.

North Ayrshire badly needs the jobs but not, as we have to hope, like the Scottish Government, ‘at any price’ – their spokesman’s words in announcing the decision.

While Ayrshire Power immediately made it know it would continue to fight for permission to go ahead, a coalition of environment, social justice and faith groups opposed to the development has welcomed the decision.

Aedán Smith, Head of Planning and Development for RSPB Scotland said:  ‘We really hope Peel take the message that nobody wants their coal plant.  They should save everybody’s time and money and drop this damaging proposal.  However, if they don’t, we’re prepared to keep fighting them right through a public inquiry until the plans are rejected’.

North Ayrshire Council’s objection comes just weeks after it emerged over 21,000 people have now objected to the plans for Hunterston, the most ever recorded for a single proposal in Scottish planning history.

Dr Richard Dixon, Director of WWF Scotland said: ‘It’s great news that the voices of the 21,000 people who objected to this climate-wrecking proposal have been heard by Councillors.  This was the wrong scheme in the wrong place.  If the company have any sense they will cut their losses and walk away from this proposal, rather than fight a bitter, lengthy and expensive public inquiry over Scotland’s most unpopular planning application’.

Stan Blackley, Chief Executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland added:  ‘This vote should serve as another nail in the coffin for Peel’s disastrous development.  It’s time to move away from burning fossil fuels, and it’s time the people of North Ayrshire stopped having unwanted polluting industry dumped on their doorstep. Scottish Ministers must now reject this proposal as soon as possible and send a clear, strong signal that Scotland’s future is in clean, green energy’.

Scottish Wildlife Trust National Planning Co-ordinator Maggie Keegan said: ‘The council know that this proposed power plant is not right for the area, its people or its wildlife. The Scottish Wildlife Trust will continue to fight against this inappropriate development. Building this power station would destroy an important feeding area for wading birds such as greenshank and oystercatcher who would have nowhere else to go in Ayrshire if the mudflats were built on. But the damage doesn’t stop there, nationally important eelgrass beds and rare species to Scotland such as seaside centaury and a type of cuckoo bee would also disappear’.

Lawrence Carter, campaigner at Greenpeace, said: ‘Today’s council decision to turn away from dirty coal is a huge step forwards for both Scotland and the UK. Building a new coal dinosaur at Hunterston would pour millions of tonnes of climate wrecking carbon dioxide into the atmosphere every year and bust Scotland’s climate change targets, all to build a power plant that isn’t even needed. Scotland is blessed with unparalleled renewable energy resources and should focus on becoming a world leader in the technologies of the future, not those of the past. Ministers should now ditch new coal pollution and win the economic growth and jobs that clean energy can bring’.

A look at the forbidding Hunterston, perched darkly on the edge of the glorious Clyde and imagining the brooding complex tripled in footprint and managed by a company as unable as its own proposal amply demonstrates is enough to underline the wisdom of North Ayrshire’s decision.

A very well informed and highly engaged audience will be putting the Scottish Government’s consequent actions under close scrutiny.