The curious case of the windfarm and the seismic array

If you live in the Scottish countryside and haven’t yet had to contend with renewable energy developers, it will only be a matter of time. Sooner or later, you too will understand the madness of the drive to Net Zero and the extent to which the UK and Scottish government have made any opposition powerless.   

I live in the beautiful Borthwick valley, just outside Hawick in the Scottish Borders.  There are no shops or pubs, and it’s a no-through road.  The area is much loved by the locals and townsfolk alike, and on hot summer days teems with families paddling in the river.

If this valley was in the Lake District, you wouldn’t be able to move for tourists, but we’re not on the radar, and it remains very quiet. It’s a great place to bring up kids. A year and a half ago we all lived in peaceful bliss, thinking we lived in the perfect spot.

That all came to an end when Invenergy – the largest privately owned renewable energy company in America, backed by billions of dollars from Blackstone Private Equity – announced they were planning to build a huge windfarm nearby.

Some of the planned turbines – 200 m high – will be situated hills that are already prominent, thus putting the tips of the turbines nearly half a kilometre above sea level, higher than the famous Eildon Hills and Ruberslaw. They will be by far the most highest landmarks in the Scottish Borders.

As we have discovered, there is virtually no chance of successfully opposing renewable energy developments.  Section 36 of the Electricity Act 1989 requires the consent of Scottish Ministers for onshore developments larger than 50 megawatts – which nowadays means nearly all them – thereby taking away the decision-making powers of local authorities.  All the renewable energy companies need is a willing landowner and a bit of time and their development will get the go ahead.  

That is, unless you live in the Scottish Borders.

Not many people know about the Eskdalemuir Seismic Array.  I certainly didn’t and I live 16 km away from it.  The array is an MoD station that monitors for nuclear testing around the world.  It is the only such facility in the UK, and is therefore a crucial part of our defence infrastructure.

Because the array is in the business of detecting vibrations, there is a 10-km exclusion zone around it, inside which activities are restricted so as to protect the array from interference. Around that, there is a 50-km consultation zone, within which the MoD manages a noise budget of permissible vibrations. 

That noise budget is currently full, so no new developments within the 50km zone are allowed by the MoD.  That is why you will see far fewer windfarms in the Scottish Borders than in the rest of Scotland.

So why and how would Invenergy plan to build a windfarm so close to the array knowing it would

• be knocked back by the MoD

• potentially interfere with national defence infrastructure at a time of worsening relations with two of the worlds great nuclear superpowers

This is where the story gets interesting. 

The ‘why’ is very easy to answer: money.  Windfarms are very profitable (even when they are being switched off). The ‘how’ is more complicated for the developers, but luckily they have the UK and Scottish governments on their sides (if not the MoD).  

In response to the development proposals, the Scottish Government set up the Eskdalemuir Working Group, with its own representatives sitting alongside others from the UK Government and the renewable energy industry. This was intended to propose a way of unlocking the land around the array so that the wind industry could exploit it.

It is hard to see the working group as anything other than a cipher to deliver what the money Just over 50% of its funding comes from the renewables industry.  That is surely a conflict of interest.

There is huge pressure from the industry for the MoD to accept a report from Xi Engineering, a company employed by the Scottish Government on behalf of the Eskdalemuir Working Group. Xi has proposed what it calls an ‘engineering seismic impact limit’, and the trade body Renewable UK has called on the UK Government to develop regulations that will allow this to be put into practice.

The relationship between Xi Engineering and the Scottish Government is interesting to say the least. Holyrood officials invited the company to submit bids for the work to look at the calculations used by the MoD, which they believe are conservative. Remarkably, Xi Engineering was the only company that bid. From FoI requests put in they were only subject to the Public Contract Scotland vetting, which doesn’t sound the sort of care you would imagine would taken when dealing with a key defense mechanism for the UK.

The company,  which is relatively small, has conflicts of interest, as it openly solicits for business from the renewable energy industry (Invenergy have just commissioned a report from Xi Engineering in regards to the Eskdalemuir Seismic Array). 

The MoD published a consultation document September 2024 and anticipates publishing a new approach to the safeguarding of the array in the fourth quarter of 2025. 

How much pressure will be put on them from the Scottish and UK Government in the race to Net Zero, and where will this leave our national defence?

And where does it leave the beautiful Borthwick valley, or the rest of of Scotland’s remaining unspoilt land?  If foreign developers – with the help of the Scottish and UK governments – can pressurise the MoD so far that they would meekly accept a threat to part of our national defence machinery then the outlook is bleak.  It’s not just the Borthwick valley that’s in trouble, it’s any hill with a compliant landowner in the whole of the Scottish Borders and beyond.