One would think that the planners and authorities of Ireland would have learned their lesson from the Derrybrien Wind Farm landslide that occurred in 2003. Sadly not, as another landslide has occurred during the construction of a wind farm, this time in Donegal at Meenbog.
In 2003, a mass of peat was dislodged from an area under development for the wind farm polluting the Owendalulleegh river, causing the death of about 50 000 fish and lasting damage to the fish spawning beds.
The Irish State has being fined € 10.5 million so far by the European Union as a result of the Derrybrien disaster. Perhaps the money would have being far better spent on re-training those working in An Bord Pleanala who gave the green light to Meenbog wind farm despite warnings from locals that it's construction could trigger a landslide.
The video above shows the scale of the recent landslide with hundreds of thousands of peat sliding into the Mourne Beg River and it's tributaries and surrounding rivers. The smaller rivers are spawning grounds for brown trout and salmon. The River Mournebeg is a designated Special Area of Conservation (SAC) and an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI). The Mournebeg river is also a tributary of the River Derg SAC. Despite these designations, both the developers and Amazon who were to use the energy from it for their data centres, got their way. So you might well say - what is the point of having protected sites at all if they can still be developed on ? Isn't the whole point of designating sites to prevent developments on or near them ?
Wind farms are a hysterical reaction to the perceived threat of climate change. And like the Polynesian tribes of Easter Island, the building of these tall structures must proceed at all costs and no matter the environmental disaster that they instigate. There won't be any days off school to protest the destruction caused by wind farms and there wont be any extinction rebellion rallying to protect the fish, birds and bats that they destroy.
The real environmental disaster goes on unhindered and unopposed and most disturbingly under the guise of environmentalism.
The report in the Irish Independent shows that electricity from Meenbog wind farm goes straight to Amazon via a "Power Purchase Agreement" (PPA). This means that the wind farm does not reduce our national CO2 emissions by a single kilogram - its output is all gobbled up by the increasing power consumption of new energy-hungry Amazon data centres. The country currently has insufficient wind farms to bring down national GHG emissions – not to squander the finite wind resources on sucking up to Jeff Bezos.
ReplyDeleteWind farms do not impact the need for fossil fuel and do not reduce co2 emissions, That is a myth. It;s like running a bus service where 5000 passengers are paying and 4000 are getting there free. Ireland needs 6000 mw capacity, it has 12,000 MW. Demand is falling and fuel prices are reducing. Prices are rising for electricity to a pint where it can no longer be afforded. Irish wind farms are losing 221 million Euros per year.
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