Rundale

Ann-Louise Bresnahan

For around five years, a multinational renewable energy company RES, originally part of the Sir Robert McAlpine group, has been quietly scoping the land around our community in the high Sperrins. What has now emerged is a proposal for an 11 turbine industrial wind factory development in the heart of the Sperrin Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, on the same ridge system connecting Sawel and Dart Mountain. The development includes not only the turbines, but also a substation, a battery energy storage system made up of 20 lithium-ion containers, new haulage and access roads, and around 20 kilometres of underground cabling. The cable route would cross four river catchments, including the Burn Dennett and the River Faughan, before linking into the proposed North Sperrin substation, which is not yet built. Peat and blanket bog would be removed to make way for all this infrastructure.

Our community wants to protect these places from developments that industrialise a landscape of deep cultural importance, while threatening peatlands, rivers, wildlife and the peaceful fabric of rural life. Landowners within the community, along with the multinational company involved, knew about these plans for years before the wider community did. That secrecy feels cruel.

It is strange to be faced with the threat of industrialisation in the place where you live, to be confronted with it head on. To realise the place you call home can be measured, priced, and redesigned, by people who can leave when the damage is done, while communities and nature are left to deal with the consequences. Many townlands will be affected by this wind factory proposal. Our community is centred around these mountains and around rural life; it is woven into our daily existence. Even those who choose to put down roots here do so because of its wild beauty, peaceful way of life, and sense of place. The peacefulness held by these mountains is something I, too, am deeply grateful for.

This is one of the most iconic landscapes in Northern Ireland, part of the central spine of an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It feels unthinkable that part of the main Sperrin Mountains, could be opened up to the highest bidder, but that’s what is happening here and throughout the Sperrins and indeed the North West. This is not the first time an extractive industry has looked to these hills. Canadian mining company Dalradian previously approached landowners and carried out sampling, and much of the Sperrins remains under mining prospecting licence, issued by the Department for the Economy to foreign companies. These licences allow exploratory work to search for minerals beneath the ground. That history makes this new threat feel part of a wider pattern: the steady treating of this landscape as a resource to be carved up, rather than a living place.

We call this one of the last wild areas of the Sperrins, blanketed in peat and home to countless species of birds and wildlife. The headwaters of the River Dennett rise here and flow into the Foyle and the unique rock formations have been studied internationally. It is also one of the few remaining dark sky areas here in the North. The scale of the project is enormous. It would involve deep turbine foundations filled with concrete and steel, around 33,000 traffic movements over an 18 month construction, the removal of bridges, and the widening of tiny rural roads, with land reportedly being bought from people’s gardens to help get turbine parts in.

I cannot write about the proposal without mentioning the wildlife. The application material presents the site as supporting multiple protected bird species, including hen harrier, peregrine, merlin, golden eagle and red grouse. Turbines can create both collision and displacement from key feeding, breeding and flight areas. The bat evidence is also concerning. Planning documents record seven bat species in the proposed area, with high to extremely high activity at turbine locations. As bats are vulnerable to both collision and barotrauma near moving blades, it is striking that the material relies largely on post-construction monitoring, with further measures considered only if fatalities begin to appear.

You see, there are deep contradictions at the heart of all this. We are repeatedly told that the North must meet the Climate Change Act 2022 target of 80% renewable electricity by 2030, with onshore wind presented as central to achieving that goal. Yet around 70% of that wind development is being concentrated in just three of the north’s eleven council areas. Add in the data centre proposals, mineral prospecting and major mining application, and it becomes harder and harder to escape the conclusion that the Northwest and indeed the Sperrins has effectively been marked out as a sacrifice zone expected to absorb the damage so others can claim the benefits. All of this appears to be entirely developer-led, with no spatial mapping available for communities to understand what is happening or what is to come.

Division by Design

The divisiveness these proposals create is devastating. So many communities, which functioned well before multinational companies arrived, are torn apart. It is happening all over the world. Companies approach landowners, many deeply embedded in community life. Letters then go out to local halls, GAA clubs, and organisations within a larger area, offering meetings about community benefit funding, all before any official application is lodged. As a post-conflict region, our communities have not had long to recover and live in peace, so developments like these feel especially damaging, creating tensions and driving new divisions

It feels like a familiar strategy for communities across the Sperrins, because mining companies have used similar tactics before, securing agreements early and making it harder for communities to come together and unite. We know this from the people and communities we have spoken to and met with who are standing up to these companies. Their stories are strikingly similar to our own.

For more than two years, we have been told by politicians and industry representatives that we must sacrifice this area to save the planet, that this is necessary to meet climate targets. None of these politicians are from this area, and none seem to truly grasp what is happening. Some give the illusion of helping here and there, but there has been no meaningful support from the main parties. None of them seem willing to stand up for rural people when it matters most.

We are expected to accept 180-metre turbines close to our homes. We are expected to tolerate low-frequency noise and sleepless nights, despite growing evidence and serious questions about how outdated noise guidance treats these impacts. We are expected to watch bats, birds, and habitats displaced or killed. We are expected to accept the excavation of vast quantities of peat to construct what amounts to an industrial wind complex on our mountains. We are expected to endure two years of 33,000 traffic movements while the land is ripped apart for construction, in front of our very eyes.

Green Colonialism

Someone once used the phrase “green colonialism” in a conversation with me to describe all of this, and it has stayed with me. Policies that may have begun with good intentions now feel captured by an industrial model focused on scale and profit. It feels deeply extractive, as we watch our heritage and sense of place erode before our eyes.

We are told this is about protecting nature, yet ancient peatlands, among the most effective carbon stores on earth, are being dug up. Peatlands cover only around three percent of the world’s surface but store enormous amounts of carbon accumulated over thousands of years. Once removed, they cannot simply be recreated, or the damage mitigated elsewhere. Restoration cannot replace ecosystems that took millennia to form.

Across the mountain range are ancient burial cairns and archaeological sites. Like so many parts of the Sperrins, this is a landscape that holds immense heritage, and we do not know what may be uncovered or damaged in the process. To watch that heritage being lost, or placed under threat, brings a succession of emotions. A bit like grief, you can feel anger, then sadness. A bit like war, it feels as though we are constantly under threat.

Enter the Data Centres

Then came the data centres. These huge buildings house thousands of servers which are used to store, process and transmit digital information. Their rapid expansion in recent years has been driven largely by the growth of artificial intelligence (AI). We learned through social media that four were proposed for Foyle Port, one approved and three more with outline planning. Very few people seemed aware of their approval, and obtaining information has been difficult. Having watched the rapid expansion in the South, we realised the North was next.

Within the space of a year, the campaign groups Save The Moat and The Gathering, which represents a collection of groups, delivered presentations and submitted Freedom of Information requests. Independents and People Before Profit have also submitted motions on the issue, highlighting the level of concern now being raised. It became evident that Derry City and Strabane District Council had approved these hyperscale AI data centres without an overall energy cap, without a full lifecycle emissions assessment, and without taking into consideration the Climate Change Act. There are also unresolved questions about water consumption and long-term impacts on the Foyle, and the wider impacts this will have on our rural communities.

This comes at the same time as the Department for the Economy released an AI strategy that speaks of AI clusters, fast tracking, and the displacement of people. The AI boom is fuelling all of this. It feels like a gold rush, like buying all the shovels before you have even found the gold. These vast, energy-hungry buildings are being constructed for what companies believe may come down the line. All of this is happening without our consent. We have not been asked whether we want AI integrated into our lives in this way, nor whether we are willing to see our energy and water diverted to serve data centres. Communities that have had these wind factories imposed on them are left asking, for what? To feed the appetite of tech billionaires far removed from the landscapes and people being sacrificed.

A narrative emerging from the System Operator for Northern Ireland (SONI), which operates the transmission system, and NIE Networks, which owns the grid infrastructure, is that high renewable dispatch-down in the Northwest is a problem of grid limits and insufficient demand. Recent comments at a Derry City and Strabane Council debate and NIE’s “Big Network Rebuild” presentation reflect a wider framing: that bringing in major new users such as data centres could mop up constrained renewable output and spread network costs more widely. But looking at what is happening in the south, that claim should be treated with caution. Dispatch down does not mean there is “spare” renewable electricity sitting free to use. It instead reflects bottlenecks, balancing requirements and market constraints, while any claim by NIE that data centres will lower bills completely ignores the wider costs of reinforcement, balancing, infrastructure and emissions. Yet at appeal hearings for wind projects here, the opposite argument is often made, that we urgently need more renewables to meet legally binding 2030 targets.

So which is it? If there is already excess generation, why are further proposals being pushed into the Sperrins AONB? There is little mention of the Single Electricity Market, the fragility of our grid, or the fact that wind farms are being built far from where the power is actually needed.

At the same time, NI industry documents indicate that around two gigawatts of additional renewables are required by 2030, primarily onshore wind. Stormont policy speaks of becoming a net exporter of renewable electricity. Meanwhile, industry bodies argue that setback distances should be reduced and planning accelerated because the low-hanging fruit has been taken and protected landscapes are now where projects must go.

If data centres absorb new onshore renewables, more wind factories are built to meet targets, and additional capacity is constructed for export, where does it end, and what will be left? At what point of ecological strain or collapse does someone finally say enough?

The Bigger Picture

No one is working out the cumulative impact of all of this. What are the full lifecycle emissions? The mining of turbine components and batteries, the steel and concrete foundations, the removal of thousands of tonnes of peat, the cable trenches stretching kilometres to substations that do not yet exist, nearly all of it concentrated in just three council areas in the Northwest, all connected to the AONB.

Companies use endless greenwashing language, speaking of power purchase agreements and global tech firms securing renewable contracts, all driving further build out. But if demand keeps rising, fuelled by data centres and government export ambitions, then targets become a moving goalpost. Higher demand is used to justify more capacity, more capacity requires more grid, more grid enables more demand, and so the cycle continues with no obvious limit.

Meanwhile in the North, over 50% of household energy use goes towards heating homes, yet there is no comparable large-scale retrofit and insulation programme. If climate action and affordability were truly the priority, insulating homes would be central. Peatland restoration and protection would be prioritised too, rather than allowing wind companies to dig it up. And of course, certainly no mention of reducing demand, only upping it.

Environmental Defenders

During a recent visit, the UN Special Rapporteur on the human right to a clean, healthy and sustainable environment, Astrid Puentes Riaño expressed concern about attempts to restrict access to judicial review in environmental cases in the south of Ireland, warning of a growing narrative in which environmental defenders are stigmatized.

On the growth in the number of data centres, she said: “The cumulative climate impact of new data centres in Ireland must be assessed alongside all recent and proposed developments. Their carbon emissions are not limited to the site itself and limit progress toward national carbon budgets.” That resonates deeply.

Accessing information on what is happening here requires FOI requests, internal reviews, and formal complaints. Communities and individuals face well-resourced legal teams, and projects rarely arrive one at a time. Once one is approved, another follows, and people burn out fighting piecemeal battles. It can feel as though democracy is slipping away.

Where We Stand

So where do we go from here?

An environmental activist I recently spoke to said that we are all just holding the line, and that really stayed with me. Across the world, communities are trying to protect their water, land, wildlife, and homes from the same pattern of extraction. Engaging with departments and councils that are only set up to protect and serve themselves can feel never ending. It would be easier to leave or put our heads down and just pretend nothing is happening. But some of us still feel that deep connection to nature and to helping people. Some still carry a fight inside our souls. Some cannot stand by and watch injustice unfold at every turn. We act because we care deeply about what is being lost, and because we still have hope.

Just like our connection to the land, everything is connected, including the extraction. So we stay to protect what cannot speak for itself and to grow bigger movements. We return to our roots and tend our own little patches. Mary Reynolds from We Are The Ark talks about how, patch by patch, we have to restore nature. I think that is so important, and I also think that, patch by patch, we have to unite. Eventually, those patches join up like mycelium, and before you know it, we have a rooted network of care and resistance.

That is what we can hope for.