Power is flowing from the Shetland Isles to mainland Britain for the first time as the UK’s most productive onshore windfarm comes on stream.
SSE says its 103-turbine project, known as Viking, can generate 443 megawatts (MW) of electricity, enough to power nearly 500,000 homes.
Shetland is the windiest part of the UK, which means it will be rare for the turbines not to be spinning.
Chief executive Alistair Phillips-Davies told BBC News a “significant acceleration” in renewable energy infrastructure is now urgently needed if the UK is to meet its climate change targets.
“We need to do a lot more of these projects, a lot more offshore wind projects as well, to make sure that we can decarbonise the energy system,” he said.
But critics of windfarms – and the pylons required to carry the electricity they generate – say a new era of mass industrialisation for private profit will ruin swathes of the British countryside.
SSE has built a 160-mile long undersea cable to carry the power from Viking to Noss Head, near Wick, on the Scottish mainland.
The company said it has invested more than £1bn in the windfarm and cable projects, and plans to plough another £20bn into renewables by the end of the decade.
Mr Phillips-Davies said that would amount to “the biggest construction that we’ve seen since the Second World War.”
“Shetland’s got a great wind resource. This is the first of the really big wind farms that may be built here. There’ll be more projects to come,” he said.
‘Crucial’ to end fossil fuel reliance
The UK’s Energy Secretary Ed Miliband said Viking was “a crucial part” of reducing the UK’s reliance
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