Tag Archives: offshore wind developments

No wonder communities are worried

Thank you for your report on fishing industry concerns over the potential loss of fishing grounds to offshore wind developments, which gives rise to several questions: Mr Newcombe of the Orion project boldly demands the equivalent of 67 Viking Energy (VE) wind farms (30GW) be installed on fishing grounds around Shetland so that he can produce humongous amounts of hydrogen at Sullom Voe. Throw in the SNP-Greens’ forthcoming ‘highly-protected marine areas’ (HPMAs) and is it any wonder Shetland’s biggest industry and the communities dependent on it are worried?  Is it appropriate to impose development on such a scale on a small, island community that has no control over the planning of it? Does the SIC accept the implied destruction of the fishing grounds, effectively, forever, as a direct result? >click to read< 08:41

‘Cable corridors’ to stop boats cutting off island’s phone and internet

The archipelago in the North Sea lost phone, broadband and mobile services last month after a subsea cable was damaged. Faroese Telecom, the cable operator, said they believed it had been cut by fishing vessels. It was later confirmed by the Scottish Government that a fishing trawler hit the primary cable. There are now proposals for a designated corridor for undersea infrastructure cables to run along. It is hoped that these would give greater certainty to fishermen, as well as reducing the risk of telecommunications outages in future. >click to read< 10:45