24 Jul 2025
The ‘eye-watering’ multi-million-pound goldrush enjoyed by wind farm hosts and developers has been exposed in a landmark court case.
As reported in the Daily Mail, a windfarm developer and a wealthy landowner have been engaged in a legal battle over who should benefit from millions of pounds of subsidies paid for consumers and taxpayers.
And it has emerged that not only do consumers foot the bill for massive subsidies to wind farm companies for electricity not needed at a particular time, the companies involved can still sell on the energy.
This means that wind farm companies are reaping the financial benefits of the same energy twice.
This will be a familiar tale to those who follow the relentless proliferation of wind farms across the Borders, where residents have long raised concerns about whether these projects genuinely deliver on their environmental promises, or simply exploit generous consumer-backed subsidies.
A judge in the Court of Session this week issued an opinion on the case which could lead to a multi-million payment from the developer to the landowner.
Lord Sandison gave his opinion in the case of Glenfiddich Wind Ltd., which is owned by the family of multimillionaire Christopher Moran, against Dorenell Wind Farm Ltd, a subsidiary of energy giant, EDF. Dorenell wind farm is a 59-turbine scheme near Dufftown in the Highlands and is located on Moran’s estate.
The contract between Glenfiddich and Dorenell laid out how the landowner would be paid – an index-linked minimum annual rent of £6,000,000 plus and additional share of the income the wind farm would receive in constraint payments – which are subsidies paid by the consumers at times when the wind farm generated electricity is not needed.
In this case, Glenfiddich claims Dorenell failed to make additional payments totalling more than £6 million. During the period in question the wind farm operator had recorded gross income of around £140 million.
The case centred round the fact that Dorenell has used an agreement to sell the electricity to EDF but did not tell the landlord about it.
The judge agreed substantially with Glenfiddich but asked both parties to review their positions before another hearing.
Experts believe this legal battle is a classic case of wind farm greed and exposed how the system is manipulated to make money.
What has come to light through this case is that wind farm operators can effectively get paid twice for the same electricity when they receive constraint payments (compensation for not producing electricity due to grid limits) and then use a Metered Volume Reallocation Agreement (MVRA) to sell the same "constrained" electricity elsewhere, often to another part of their company or a trading arm, at market rates.
In effect, consumers fund the first payment through their bills, and the operator then profits again through energy trading, even though the energy wasn’t actually produced at that site.
In the five years since it started operating, Dorenell has received more than £45 million in publicly funded constraint payments. Last year Dorenell was ordered to pay £5,530,000 by Ofgem to be made to Ofgem’s consumer redress fund for a breach of electricity generation licensing conditions.
Earlier this year it was reported that constraint payments had topped £2.16 billion in the UK and £2 million in Scotland.
The court case, and the complexities of the system, has been exposed in an article by Guy Adams in the Daily Mail and can be read here: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14919977/truth-Britain-taxpayer-cash-soaked-wind-farm-industry.html