Scottish site for major EU windfarm

Europe's largest windfarm is to be built alongside the M74 in south-west Scotland after Scottish ministers approved plans to erect more than 150 turbines on surrounding moors. The £600m project is likely to produce enough electricity to power more than 250,000 homes by the time it is completed in 2011, and is well over twice the size of Europe's largest existing windfarm, at Guadalajara in Spain. The approval was announced yesterday by Alex Salmond, Scotland's first minister, at a world renewable energy congress in Glasgow, although it later emerged that Salmond and Scottish executive officials had exaggerated the scale of the project, by quoting the maximum legal limit for the windfarm. The SNP leader claimed the windfarm would have a 548MW capacity, capable of supplying electricity for 320,000 homes. The power company... [read full story]