ISLANDERS who responded to a consultation on building a wind farm in Jersey’s territorial waters overwhelmingly supported the project.
Environment Minister Steve Luce has also thrown his backing behind the development, which he said would provide “lots of opportunities”.
But, he cautioned that there were still hurdles to overcome, including how the wind farm would be funded.
Deputy Luce hopes the States Assembly will set a “clear mandate” to move forward with the project when they debate the matter next month.
In October, the Council of Ministers lodged a proposition asking politicians to give in-principle support to the idea of a wind farm off the south-west coast.
Around 1,000 Islanders have since responded to the proposal in a consultation, which is summarised in a report published this week [full story on pages 4 and 5 of today’s JEP].
Of the 97% of respondents who provided their “current opinion” about developing a wind farm in Jersey waters, the report states that the majority (71.8%) were “positive” while 23.5% were “negative” and 4.7% of responses were neither for nor against the proposal.
Deputy Luce said: “I’m really hopeful that the States Assembly are going to give me a quite clear mandate to go away and move forward.
“The reason we want a clear mandate from the Assembly next month is, as we move forward with this, any potential private developer or developers generally will be wanting to see that there’s a clear direction here from government, from the States Assembly.
“There may well be a few – I hope it’s only just a very few – who don’t want to move forward. That’s within their rights, but I’d like the States to come out with a very clear direction that we’re keen on this. We want to see it work.”
He added that there was “lots of potential” for the project to generate income for the Island, in addition to creating jobs.
“There’s lots of opportunity, but we need to get over the hurdles, environmental impact being one of them – and that’s a big one – as well as how we fund it and the sort of model [of energy usage], whether it’s all into Europe, all through Jersey and export or whether it’s a combination of the two.”
