The folk living in and around here are getting increasingly alarmed as they get to realise the impact of the proposed Scout Moor 2 monster windfarm, another 21 turbines, all 180m high! Each one higher than Blackpool Tower! They will dominate this valley far and wide. No area will escape this harm to our treasured moorland landscape and heritage.

Who had this terrible idea?

The answer is Cubico a global renewable energy company – owned by a Canadian pension fund which means local damage and offshore profits! Are we surprised?

Check out the details, look at these artistic interpretations showing Blackpool Towers superimposed on existing views. This is what we will have to endure. Do you really want this?

We all want to protect the planet, have clear air, clean water and to reduce waste and pollution. However, despite its size, this wind farm will have no impact on global warming. In fact, by digging up our peat and replacing it with thousands of tonnes of concrete, it could make emissions worse. And that’s not even considering the potential impact on water courses and flooding!

Our lovely, historically renowned Cotton Famine Road will be surrounded by towering noisy turbines. And what about the farms up there that are so essential to our local food chain? Do you think we will ever hear the skylarks soaring and singing again? Roads will criss-cross the moors to erect and service the turbines. Off-road biking, already a massive problem, will go through the roof. And just wait for the traffic obstruction as the monster blades are manoeuvred along our narrow roads.

This is our unsung beautiful green lung, away from the hustle and bustle of town and city life. It’s free for walkers, cyclist, tourists and horse riders. A place where you can enjoy the peace and quiet of the countryside. Who will want to visit when they are surrounded by monster turbines?

And they are trying to bribe us with community funds – paltry amounts in the scheme of things! And remember it’s our money they want to “pay” us with via our hugely inflated energy bills. There are multiple companies under “Cubico Sustainable Investments” that can be seen registered with Companies House. “Cubico Sustainable Investments GP1 Limited” seems to be the top of the tree. You will see from their published accounts the Directors remuneration was $2.8m last year, and $5.6m the year before, but they only paid $4k and $2k to the UK in tax in each of those two years. This does little to reassure us that Scout Moor 2 is nothing more than a means to make money where the investors will do all they can to take as much as they can and put very little back in to the UK economy.

And did we ever get any funds promised by Scout Moor 1 developers? No – we did not!

What’s going to happen when they are obsolete? There is no chest of money to decommission. Our poor children will have a rotting landscape of static turbines and Cubico themselves have said that remediation of the moorland is impossible because they never intend to dig out and remove the arterial roads and turbine bases embedded into the moorland.

English Countryside in 2065 (AI generated using Chat-GPT)

And don’t forget that Cubico also want to install a massive battery energy storage facility next to Rochdale Road between Norden and Edenfield. Another development only possible due to huge subsidies and using technology which can lead to dangerous runaway fires that emit huge quantities of extremely toxic gases over a wide area.

A lot to consider.

But at least now you know!