Environmental Impact Assessment Coursework Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2500 words

Environmental Impact Assessment - Coursework Example This shows the fast growing trend of establishing wind energy infrastructure and it is evident that we are going to see many similar projects been commissioned. On one hand it is a very healthy step to shift from non-renewable fuels to green technologies such as wind energy but these technologies also have some issues regarding their impacts on environment and need to be scoped and studied. Another reason for this selection is that this project is an extension, so its impact on the environment will not just be doubled but increased many folds. As you can see in the figure that the extension project is adjacent to high density wind farming area shown in RED. 1.2 Location and Description of the Project Whitelee Wind Farm, is the biggest onshore wind farm in Europe Union, which started in May 2009. ... The Whitelee project will use 69 Alstom ECO 100 wind turbines with a 3MW capacity and six ECO 74 turbines with 1.6MW capacity each. This expansion will confirm Whitelee’s status as the largest wind farm in Europe. â€Å"Simon Christian, UK director of ScottishPower Renewables, said â€Å"Whitelee windfarm is already the largest onshore windfarm in Europe and this extension pushing the overall capacity to 539MW will make it one of the largest in the world.† (Simon Christian) ? Site : Whitelee Wind Farm EXT ? Part : Eaglesham Moor ? Latitude : 55 ° 41' 13.1" ? Longitude : -4 ° 13' 44.4" ? Geodetic system : WGS84 In the above figure the green area mainly comprises of the wind farm and we can see that there are urban areas nearby which include Kilmamock and Hamilton. The next figure will give us the deeper picture of the extension and the turbine density in the gird. Where the blue circles show the planned extension turbine location and the grey show the existing turbi nes. As from the figure we can see that the extension will make create proximity of turbines to the urban areas(white parts of the figure) and therefore the turbines will have more adverse affects on the environment of the area and possibility of accidents will rise in these locations. At present this land is mainly used for grazing for livestock, agriculture activities and forestry. There has been an effective conservation of these activities before the extension but there is potential risk to them now as more turbines will occupy more spaces and construction of these facilities will require more restricted areas and spots. Same is the case with the visual amenity, where now the excessive number of wind turbines