Advertising Standards Authority rules against wind farm developer

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ruled that the company proposing to build a controversial wind farm north of Omagh made wrong claims in a leaflet distributed to local residents at an information evening. The company, Windyriver, is part of the same group as a company the Sunday World exposed in May as claiming the community centre at Broughderg, Co Tyrone, supported a planning application – without the centre’s permission: and attempting to mislead MP Pat Doherty into supporting that application.

The company, Windyfields, trades as ARC NI 3. It has applied for planning permission for the wind farm at Lisnaharney. The ASA has ruled “The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told (the developers) not to make claims for which they did not hold adequate substantiation.”

It ruled that the developer was wrong in:

The claimed ‘540 job years’ to be created. The ASA said “… it was not clear from the report how those figures had been calculated. In the absence of that information, we considered we had not seen adequate substantiation to support the claims and concluded those claims were misleading.”

The claimed contribution of £869,797 to the local economy. The ASA called this “misleading.”

The claimed annual output of 110,376 Megawatts of electricity. The ASA said “the indicative electricity output figure stated in the ad was misleading.” Even if the wind farm’s capacity had been substantiated “the claim should have been phrased conditionally to make clear that the calculation on which it was based was an estimate.”

The claimed 23,733 homes that would be powered. The ASA ruled this was “misleading.”

The claim that Lisnaharney would save "just over 1% of the total UK annual (carbon dioxide emission) reduction target and 12.6% of Northern Irelands [sic] target." The ASA ruled that the real figure would be about 0.6% of Northern Ireland’s emissions, and thus the claim was “misleading.”

Jason Devine of Lisnaharney Residents Group made the complaint to the ASA. Devine said the planners have to take the ruling into consideration. “The claims Advertising Standards has said are wrong are the same as are in documents submitted with the planning application,” Devine said. “I don’t see how the planners can pass this. And, after this, it is very hard to trust anything this company says. I can’t see how any community can trust them.”

The Lisnaharney wind farm has stirred up a storm of objections. The proposed site is just west of famous beauty-spot the Gortin Glens. The turbines are to be 410 feet high, on top of a ridge approximately 1,000 feet high. Objectors include Sport NI, part of the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure. “The site of this proposed development is one of the premier locations in the area for walking not only for the Sperrins but also throughout Northern Ireland,” wrote Mike McClure of Sport NI.

The directors of Windyfields are Richard Dixon-Ward and Leonard Seelig, with addresses in London, and Harley Geoffrey Potter, with an address in Mashpee, Massachusetts, USA. Renewable Energy International controls Windyfields. Seelig and Potter are the directors of that company. The company gives its address as a basement flat in London. The largest shareholder in Renewable Energy International is REI LLP, which is not registered as a company in the UK.

According to Renewable Energy International’s website, it is “currently open to negotiations on the purchase” of both the Lisnaharney and Windyhill projects. Neither has yet received planning permission. Renewable Energy International has applied to Companies House to be struck off voluntarily as a company.

A spokesperson for Renewable Energy International said they were disappointed by the ASA’s ruling. “Nevertheless, we have complied with the ASA recommendation and removed the material from circulation,” the spokesperson said. “We sincerely hope that the ASA’s intervention at the behest of outside parties does not inhibit the free flow of information to genuinely interested and concerned parties particularly local residents and representatives.”

This is a longer version of a piece published in the Sunday World on September 8th 2013