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Last month wind power provided enough energy for 136% of Scottish households

Scottish turbines provided 1.2 million megawatt hours of electricity to the National Grid in March

Samuel Osborne
Tuesday 04 April 2017 13:48 BST
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The wind turbines outside Stirling Castle
The wind turbines outside Stirling Castle (Getty)

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Last month wind turbines provided enough energy to meet the electrical needs of 136 per cent of Scottish households, the equivalent of 3.3 million homes.

Scottish turbines provided 1.2 million megawatt hours of electricity to the National Grid in March, an increase of 81 per cent compared to the same month last year, an analysis of WeatherEnergy data by WWF Scotland found.

Wind power generated the equivalent of 58 per cent of Scotland's entire electricity needs for the month.

On two days, wind turbines generated more than Scotland's total power needs for the entire day.

"Given this March wasn't as windy as it has been in some previous years, this year's record output shows the importance of continuing to increase capacity by building new wind farms," Lang Banks, WWF Scotland's director said.

"As well as helping to power our homes and businesses, wind power supports thousands of jobs and continues to play an important role in Scotland's efforts to address global climate change by avoiding millions of tonnes of carbon emissions every year."

Commenting on the analysis, WeatherEnergy's Karen Robinson said it was "massively impressive" how Scotland had "steadily grown its wind power output."

WWF Scotland urged political parties to continue to back onshore wind power to cut carbon emissions.

"The UK Government’s decision to end support for onshore wind is going to make meeting our international climate obligations much harder in the future," Mr Banks said.

"The reality is that if we’re serious about cutting carbon pollution in the most cost-effective way, then we need every one of the political parties in Scotland to back the continued deployment of onshore wind power."

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