Alastair Darling MP, Secretary for Trade and Industry, officially started construction on the £300 million Whitelee windfarm on Monday October 9.

Located south of Glasgow, the Whitelee project is Europe’s largest onshore windfarm, covering 55 square kilometres with 140 turbines. It will provide 322MW of energy, enough for 200,000 homes and is expected to make a ‘significant contribution to Scotland’s renewable energy target for the year 2010’, say Scottish Power.  

The Rt Hon Mr Darling and Scottish Power Chief Executive Philip Bowman were joined by pupils from nearby Eaglesham Primary at the event.

The children had won a schools’ competition to choose what was to be buried in a time capsule on the site.
Said Neil Marshall (11), ‘I hope that the windfarm goes well because then we won’t have to pollute the environment as much.’

The time capsule contained the day’s newspaper, some money, a watch stopped at the time and date of burial, photographs of modern Eaglesham and before and after pictures of the windfarm site.