Activists step up bid to halt biomass power plant

The plant is a joint venture between dock owner Forth Ports and Scottish & Southern Energy and would process up to 1.3 million tonnes of biomass material every year, largely woodchip imported from overseas.

It would lie in the Albert Dock area, close to land scheduled for new homes, hotels and visitor attractions. The plant would include a smoke stack 100 metres tall, a boiler house, steam turbine building and storage area. Local campaigners say it will harm the regeneration of the area and ruin protected views across the city.

Greener Leith spokesman Alastair Tibbett said: "The actual plant is going to be around 65 metres high, but the stack is proposed to go up to 100 metres. It would seem to cut across much-vaunted view corridors put in place to protect views of the world heritage site. Our main concern is this will be a bad neighbour scheme and put off other developers from going ahead with projects in the area."

Leith councillor Gordon Munro said the plant would be a "huge blot on the landscape", and chairman of the Leith Links Residents Association, Rob Kirkwood, said: "Forth Ports are being very opportunistic. They have seen land values plummeting and know there is major funding available for these kind of projects. Leith Docks was supposed to be a really special area, but who is going to want to live next to this?"