Heather Lafferty works for Statkraft the largest green generator in Europe. Fair enough but she’s not an engineer or in sales or marketing…she’s an ecologist charged with ensuring when they build a windfarm they do it in the kindest way possible.
You may think windfarms are green all that zero carbon energy – but hang on, you need to build huge things with concrete, steel, plastic, you have to dig up the ground, have noise and pollution issues let alone the effects on birds and animals, so how do you ensure your green power source isn’t destroying the greenery around it?
Heather says that’s her remit and it’s more complicated than you may think.
“Developers don’t just drop some turbines on a location and hope for the best.
“Ecology is such a broad subject. You have your bird specialists but you also have your mammal specialist and you have your habitat specialists. The types of surveys vary, again, depending on what it is you’re doing. It can be back to basics. Somebody sits on a hill and they record flying activity. They sit there for six hours and they record birds flying. And they map out with a piece of paper and a pen, or some of them are moving towards technology. So iPads or tablets. But yeah, it’s the basics.
“Where did that bird fly and what height did they fly at. Then that information is then used to understand how is it going to impact a bird that if the project was there? How would the bird navigate around it or navigate away from it?”
Heather’s team is working across Scotland at present, extending windfarms or planning new ones. If there are nature concerns they may reduce or shift the position of a turbine, however if that means less windmills it means less revenue, so doesn’t she have a conflict I ask?
“Yes, for me, in my opinion, there would be a conflict of interest if I was the one collecting the data, doing the assessments and making the decision on whether it’s a significant impact or not. Because of that, I don’t do the assessments. So we appoint, independent consultants who will go out and collect all this data.
“I then take that advice on board and I understand that with both hats on, ultimately I have a business hat on – but I also have an ecology hat on – and I can engage with the project manager who will make the decision on on what is the best way forward for the project.”
We discuss plenty more including the way the great build out of green energy will have to be done carefully and the plans for making sure windfarm sites cause least damage to nature, do listen now to the whole podcast.
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