Green light for rail station wind turbine

Planning permission has been granted for an innovative new scheme at Horwich Parkway railway station.

Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM), which owns the station, will install a twin-bladed wind turbine to provide it with an eco-friendly energy source.

Any surplus energy produced will be sold back to the National Grid.

Councillor Roger Jones, Chair of TfGM’s Policy and Capital Projects sub-committee, said: “It’s great news that Bolton Council has approved this project.

“Public transport is already an environmentally friendly travel choice, but by reducing the carbon footprint of transport infrastructure with renewable energy schemes like this one, we can make it even greener and lead the way in moving towards sustainable public transport.”

Bolton Council’s Executive Member for Environmental Services, Councillor Akhtar Zaman, said: “Bolton Council has contributed funding from its Transport Infrastructure Fund, and welcomes the opportunity to be involved in this innovative, environmentally friendly scheme.”

The turbine is a low-noise, high-efficiency model and will produce approximately 23MWh a year – enough to power five average houses.

That means an annual saving of around 12 tonnes of carbon dioxide.

Members of Bolton Council visited the site on Wednesday, where TfGM officers showed them the proposed turbine location and answered questions about the scheme.

The Horwich Parkway Turbine project is part of Ticket to Kyoto, a European initiative to reduce carbon emissions in public transport. TfGM has already successfully installed a hydro-electric power scheme in Rochdale as part of the initiative.

Approximately £50,000 (at the current exchange rate) of the funding for the Horwich Parkway Wind Turbine project is from the European Union’s INTERREG IVB programme, with additional funding from the Northwest Regional Development Agency, Bolton Council and Transport for Greater Manchester.