Scout Moor Wind Farm

Scout Moor Wind Farm is the second largest onshore wind farm in England. The wind farm, which was built for Peel Wind Power Ltd, produces electricity from 26 Nordex N80 wind turbines. It has a total nameplate capacity of 65 MW of electricity, providing 154,000 MW·h per year; enough to serve the average needs of 40,000 homes. The site occupies 1,347 acres (545 ha) of open moorland between Edenfield, Rawtenstall and Rochdale, and is split between the Metropolitan Borough of Rochdale in northern Greater Manchester and the Borough of Rossendale in south-eastern Lancashire. The turbines are visible from as far away as south Manchester, 15–20 miles (24–32 km) away.

A protest group was formed to resist the proposed construction, and attracted support from the botanist and environmental campaigner David Bellamy. Despite the opposition, planning permission was granted in 2005 and construction began in 2007. Although work on the project was hampered by harsh weather, difficult terrain, and previous mining activity, the wind farm was officially opened on 25 September 2008 after "years of controversy", at a cost of £50 million.

In 2012 Peel Energy sold its 50% share in the facility to Munich Re's asset management division MEAG. The other 50% holding was also purchased by MEAG from HgCapital Renewable Power Partners.

In November 2024, Cubico Sustainable Investments unveiled plans to expand Scout Moor Wind Farm with 21 new turbines, aiming to generate over 100 MW of electricity. This expansion would make Scout Moor the largest onshore wind farm in England. The project would power 100,000 homes and contribute over 10% of Greater Manchester's domestic energy needs, marking a key step toward the UK's goal of doubling onshore wind capacity by 2030.

Scout Moor is an upland moor of peat bog and heather in the South Pennines, reaching a maximum elevation of 1,552 feet (473 m) at its peak, Top of Leach. The underlying geology – a mixture of hard rock and soft shales – broadly belongs to the Lower Coal Measures. The rock and shales weather at different rates, giving the area a landscape of "steep escarpments separated by sloping shelves", although the main dome of the moor is flat and rounded. The moorland covers an area of about 1,347 acres (545 ha), of which less than 21 acres (8.5 ha), about 2%, is occupied by the wind farm.

Scout Moor Quarry, a 250-acre (100 ha) open-pit mine in Edenfield, is used for the extraction of gritstone and sandstone, and formerly had its own railway line. The eastern fringe of Scout Moor Wind Farm extends to Hail Storm Hill (also known as Cowpe Moss), one of the 180 Marilyns of England. The presence of coal under Scout Moor led to extensive and unrecorded shallow coal mining in the area during the 18th and 19th centuries. Adits, shafts and coal seams from that period mark the landscape.

One meaning of scout is a long ridge of rock, appearing to "shoot out" horizontally. The word is thought to be a corruption of the Old English sceot, meaning "shot" or "to shoot", suggesting Anglo-Saxon settlement in the locality at a very ancient time.

Although the UK Government has set a target of 10% for the proportion of the UK's electricity produced by renewable energy by 2010, wind power in the UK has a long history of controversy, with an average approval rate for planning permission of only 28% for onshore wind farms. Scout Moor was first identified as an excellent site for a wind farm in 2001. Peel Holdings commissioned market research consultants MORI to undertake a telephone poll over seventeen days in 2002, soliciting the opinions of residents in Bury, Rossendale and Rochdale about wind farms in general and Scout Moor in particular. The results showed that 88% of respondents thought wind farms were a very or fairly good idea, 72% thought the Scout Moor project was a very or fairly good idea, and 63% stated wind power as the preferred energy source.