More than 2,500 planning applications to build wind farms in Scotland have been submitted to local councils by energy companies over the past 18 months.
The figures were released by Scottish Conservatives after the party served Freedom of Information disclosure letters to the country’s 32 local authorities.
Murdo Fraser, MSP, Energy spokesman in Holyrood for the Scottish Conservatives, said: “These planning applications put council planning departments under immense strain and cause great concern to local communities.
“This surge has got to stop and the way to do that is to end the ludicrous subsidies for an unreliable and intermittent energy source”
The Scottish Conservatives asked every council in Scotland how many wind farm applications it had received in the last 18 months. The responses (South Ayrshire and Wet Dunbartonshire councils refused to comply) are chronicled below:
| Aberdeen |
9 |
|||
| Aberdeenshire |
428 |
|||
| Angus |
49 |
|||
| Argyll and Bute |
62 |
|||
| Clackmannanshire |
0 |
|||
| Dumfries & Galloway |
256 |
|||
| Dundee |
2 |
|||
| East Ayrshire |
160 |
|||
| East Dunbartonshire |
5 |
|||
| East Lothian |
24 |
|||
| East Renfrewshire |
27 |
|||
| Edinburgh |
3 |
|||
| Falkirk |
19 |
|||
| Fife |
196 |
|||
| Glasgow |
4 |
|||
| Highland |
376 |
|||
| Inverclyde |
15 |
|||
| Midlothian |
15 |
|||
| Moray |
55 |
|||
| North Ayrshire |
18 |
|||
| North Lanarkshire |
48 |
|||
| Orkney |
371 |
|||
| Perthshire & Kinross |
12 |
|||
| Renfrewshire |
2 |
|||
| Scottish Borders |
77 |
|||
| Shetland |
34 |
|||
| South Ayrshire | – | |||
| South Lanarkshire |
122 |
|||
| Stirling |
17 |
|||
| West Dunbartonshire | – | |||
| West Lothian |
31 |
|||
| Western Isles |
71 |
|||
| TOTAL |
2508 |
|||
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