Wind Farm Built to Supply Amazon Data Centres Causes Landslide

 

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. 

Leitrim Wind Farm Racks Up Losses of € 5.6 Million

Garvagh Glebe, a 26MW wind farm in Leitrim,  made a loss of € 3.5 million last year and has racked up combined losses of € 5.6 million after nine years. In 2017, it had a load factor of 23% after it's availability dropped to 59%. This means it was out of operation for 40% of the year and when it was operating only running on average at 23% of it's potential output.

The wind farm was completely dependent on funding from it's shareholder ESB to continue operating for another 12 months. This makes a complete mockery of the idea that renewables are competing against fossil fuels. ESB, which owns most of the fossil fuel power stations in the country, can only maintain investment in it's  loss making wind farms with funding from it's more profitable fossil fuel power sector. 

In 2008, during construction of the wind farm, 6,000 fish, mainly trout, were killed when tonnes of peat swept through the Owengar river which runs into Lough Allen. A similar incident occurred in Co.Galway during construction of another ESB owned Derrybrien wind farm where around 50,000 fish were killed. 

How Green Is This ?

A windfarm constructed this month in Donegal raised some eyebrows when a seemingly endless amount of construction vehicles arrived on site. With such a low capacity credit, will this windfarm ever payback it's embedded CO2 emissions ?