Why massive Berwick Bank windfarm can and must be stopped

These predicted casualty numbers are in addition to the many thousands of birds that are expected to be displaced by the development, forced to find alternative places to fish.

There are many, many better places for offshore windfarms around Scotland and we have a responsibility to protect the internationally important seabirds breeding around our coastlines. Yet these facts failed to sway the decision.

READ MORE: Seabirds are Scotland's 'Great Barrier Reef'. We must get windfarms right to avoid calamity

Nature loses out again

In the face of promises of investment and growth, ministers’ commitments to tackling the nature emergency and reversing the calamitous declines in biodiversity once again crumbled. If this story feels familiar, that’s because it’s one that keeps on repeating itself.

In 2008, the SNP government agreed to Donald Trump’s proposal to build two new golf courses on the Aberdeenshire coast, overruling advice from conservation charities like the RSPB and the government’s own nature adviser, NatureScot (then Scottish Natural Heritage). A decade later, NatureScot confirmed that the damage to the dune network caused by the development was so great that it had “destroyed the dynamic nature of the site” and the area no longer merited being a protected area as a result.

Yet decision-makers everywhere appear unable to learn from sad stories like this one. For example, the UK Government has this year been promising to dispense with environmental protections to unlock economic growth, with the Chancellor lashing out at bats, newts and even snails for blocking development.

The argument that nature is a barrier to growth, and that government’s role is to overcome that barrier, is as tired as it is false. Our prosperity and wellbeing is built upon a healthy natural environment. In 2021, the UK Government published a major independent review of the economics of biodiversity by the economist Sir Partha Dasgupta. It concluded that nature “is our greatest asset”, upon which our economies, livelihoods and wellbeing depend. But governments north and south of the Border consistently fail to account for this asset in their decision-making.

‘Compensation’ plan not credible

In the case of Berwick Bank, the Scottish Government will argue that they have accounted for nature by requiring the developer to have a “seabird compensation plan” that must be agreed before work can start. This plan will have to set out how the developer will, for example, fund projects that create an additional 260 new gannets a year to compensate for the 260 that may be killed by the windfarm.

In smaller numbers, this approach might be feasible. Compensation provides a realistic route for lower-impact windfarms to be built while ensuring there is no net negative impact on our natural environment. But the sheer scale of the challenge for Berwick Bank, which would require compensation for tens of thousands of dead seabirds over its lifetime, is simply not credible.

It is simply the wrong place to build a windfarm. Many other offshore windfarms are being proposed in places where the impact on nature will be a fraction of that of Berwick Bank. Many of these are employing floating wind technology, which has rapidly advanced in recent years, rather than turbines that are fixed to the seabed.

This allows development further offshore, in deeper sea that is less important to seabirds and other wildlife. A good example of this is Ossian, a similar sized windfarm to Berwick Bank that also counts SSE Renewables among its backers. In contrast, however, Ossian will use floating turbines and is set to be developed in deeper waters around 80km off the east coast of Scotland, resulting in far fewer risks to wildlife.

Better places

Offshore wind, and indeed other renewable energy technologies, are not incompatible with nature. It’s poor planning and decision-making that fails to value nature which is at the root of conflicts such as this one.

A strategic approach to developing Scotland’s offshore wind industry would seek to guide development to these lower impact sites, screening out the most sensitive areas of our seas from the outset. This approach would minimise environmental impacts, and it gives developers greater certainty, reducing the risk of conflict and delays.

Ultimately, the offshore wind sector enjoys public support because it promises a greener future. Betray that promise, and its license to operate will inevitably come under ever greater public scrutiny.

But Berwick Bank proceeding also threatens lower impact windfarms in other ways. No project is without impact, and many of these windfarms will be required to invest in compensation too. However, there are only so many credible means of delivering compensation for killing seabirds, and the scale of Berwick Bank’s requirements threatens to hoover them up and leave little left over for other projects.

Similarly, there is only so much government support available for windfarms, and Berwick Bank will require a considerable slice of the pie.

All of this is why we and so many others from the nature conservation community are not giving up. Berwick Bank, as it is currently proposed, can and must be stopped. Both to protect nature, and to build a thriving, clean, green offshore renewables industry in Scotland.

Harry Huyton is chief executive of the Scottish Seabird Centre at North Berwick