Public meeting - AGM and Wind Turbine questions

News that we have successfully raised funds for the pre-application phase of the Leith & Portobello Community Wind Turbine has attracted a bit of press attention lately. As this photo shows, we made the front page of the second last ever Herald and Post.

 As we are keen to involve as many Leithers as possible in the development of the project, we're in doubt that the best subject for our AGM this year will be our community wind turbine project.

We would like to invite all our members, supporters, friends and indeed any local resident interested in finding out more about the wind turbine proposal, or any of our other project to come to our Annual General Meeting for 2011.

The meeting will take place in the Leith Community Centre, in the Persevere Room at 7.30pm on Tuesday the first of November.

Everyone is welcome, so please do forward details of this meeting to anyone whom you believe may be interested.

We should make it clear however, that the money we have borrowed from the Scottish Government is to pay for all the detailed research that we need to do to two things:

1. To determine whether a wind turbine is actually feasible and that there is a workable business case.
2. And if it is feasible, to put together a detailed planning application.

If both of these steps are successful, then Greener Leith, in partnership with PEDAL Portobello, will borrow more money to build the wind turbine.

Given that a lot of the feasibility research has not be started, let alone completed yet, we may not be able to answer technical questions about the wind turbine project in massive detail at the meeting. Nevertheless, we will try to answer all questions as honestly and transparently as we can.

In particular, we'd like to know how you think we should spend any financial surplus the wind turbine may generate, if it does get the go ahead. 

We are also trying to persuade people from other Scottish communities where community wind projects are already up and running, to come and speak at the meeting. However, at present our guest speakers are still to be confirmed.

In the meantime, if you've got a spare fifteen minutes you may want to have a look at this short film about how a community wind project affected the village of Fintry.

If you have any questions please do get in touch.