00:00My name is Georgina O'Sullivan. I'm a resident of Garth. We're here today to bring this pony
00:07pop-up show to the people of Douglas because there's been a complete deficit in the information
00:14that's coming out to the public and we're a group of residents who are trying to fix that.
00:18So we started a petition and a Facebook page. Our group is called No Offshore Turbines for
00:24the Isle of Man. The short name is as you see not for IOM and as I say we're a
00:30self-funding
00:31resident group. We've currently got closing into seven and a half thousand signatures on our
00:36petition to say no to this wind farm because it's a totally disproportionate development for the
00:44island. There's 87 turbines all taller than the Eiffel Tower running down from Ramsey to Onkin
00:52six miles off our shore. There's nothing else in the world that's as big as this right now and if
00:58the that the plans for any that are as big as this they're at least 20 to 25 to 30
01:03miles away not six
01:05miles. So there's so many reasons that from a point of view of surrounding our island with something
01:11like this is just totally unacceptable. So the original agreement for lease that was signed by
01:16the government with Orsted the developer in 2015 is secret. So we don't really know what's in it
01:22except what the developer has has told us. But we do know that we found out through the house of
01:28keys a
01:29statement made in the house of keys that we're currently earning 10,000 pounds a year for 81 square
01:35miles of our seabed. If that was a mile over the territorial line into UK crown estate waters there would
01:42have been a 210 million pound option sign up fee just to start with the the thing rolling and then
01:49probably 80 million a year in rental. So we've had 100,000 in 10 years including that and if if
01:59we'd have
01:59been across the water there in the UK waters that would have been somewhere like closing in on four
02:05or five hundred million that we would have had by now. So it's just a terrible deal it's secret we
02:10don't
02:11know what most people we talk to don't want it and so that's really what we're trying to do we're
02:16trying to get that out there. What has the reception been like in Douglas today when you've been talking
02:20to people and getting signatures? Unbelievable we we you know we felt there hadn't been much action
02:27from the Douglas population and so that's why we're here we're coming again tomorrow but what we're finding
02:33is people are saying oh I didn't know about it oh I've read about it but tell me more people
02:37are
02:38lining up to sign I mean it's been fantastic we're so thrilled because it's not just a local issue
02:43this is an island issue not not just a local area issue. And then your end goal not for IOM
02:49your end
02:49goal what what do you want? We want a deal that's good for the island we want renewable energy that's
02:57that's proportionate for what we need none of this power is is coming it was never set up to come
03:02to
03:02the island this was a project set up to sell power to the UK grid and that's still what's going
03:08to
03:08happen so 100 but we think 100% of this power is just going to go to to the UK.
03:13Orsted the developer
03:14say yeah but you'll be able to buy it back across the interconnector but that's not that doesn't do us
03:20any good with the UK currently paying the highest electricity bills in the world along with Germany
03:25because of renewables and the subsidy based system that that it's built on. So from our point of view
03:32we know we need to do something for the island this isn't going to do it that the finances we
03:38don't
03:38understand we don't know really what they are we think they're puny if we look at the seabed rental
03:46we can do better and I think you know this is they're talking about this being lasting 35 years
03:51this is already a business on the wane a lot of people are moving into different technologies
03:56and we don't think we should be signing up for something that you know could be over in 10 years
Comments