Shetland wind farm mailout banned

Watchdog rules marketing misled consumers over claims about financial and green benefits to community
Mark Sweney
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 11 November 2009 07.06 GMT

Viking energy ad: claims were ruled misleading
A marketing campaign for a wind farm project, backed by Scottish and Southern Energy, has been banned by the advertising watchdog for misleading consumers over claims about financial and green benefits to the community.
A mailout by Viking Energy promised to "harness Shetland's natural resources for a greener future".
Viking Energy made a number of claims including that 50% of the profits would stay with the Shetland community; that annually £25m to £30m would be injected into the economy; that "upwards" of £18m in profits would go to the Shetland Charitable Trust; and that a report showed that the carbon produced in construction would be "cancelled out by green power in less than three years".
The Advertising Standards Authority received five complaints about the claims challenging whether they could be substantiated and were misleading.
Viking Energy admitted that its figures of millions of pounds were not precise and that, in fact, "heavily adjusted downwards and have subsequently found to be underestimates".
The company also said that the report, published by the Scottish government in June last year, showed that the total carbon emission savings and payback time for the wind farm in question was between 1.8 and 2.6 years.
However, the ASA said that it was not true that 50% of the economic benefits would go to community projects or bodies in the Shetlands because 50% would go to Scottish and Southern Energy and 5% to four directors.
The ASA also said that the claims about financial figures were misleading because, despite Viking Energy supplying detailed calculations, it had not supplied real evidence such as contracts guaranteeing the prices of electricity the wind farm would generate.
In its ruling the ad watchdog added that in addition to the governmental report Viking Energy also had its own environmental statement estimating that carbon payback would be most likely after 3.7 years. This made the claim of "less than three years" misleading.
The ASA told Viking it could not use the claims again in its marketing material.