East Ayrshire wind farms produced 2.3 percent of the UK’s electricity generated by wind power last year according to figures from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.

In total, East Ayrshire wind farms generated roughly 720 gigawatts per hour (GWh) throughout 2019, 95 percent of total renewable electricity produced in the region.

The remaining five percent was made up of landfill gas, which is created by the decomposition of organic materials, and solar power.

Offshore and onshore wind farms across the UK generated a total of around 32,000GWh last year.

At the end of 2019, there were 68 ‘onshore wind installations’ in East Ayrshire. This figure includes locations where just one turbine has been erected as well as the larger wind farms and so is not the number of turbines in total.

A clearer indicator of the number of turbines in the area is to look at the Installed Capacity (MW) for the area, the total amount of energy turbines in the area can produce.

Turbines in East Ayrshire, at the end of 2019 had an Installed Capacity of 379.2MW, which is less than South Ayrshire at 653.1MW, Dumfries and Galloway at 679MW and South Lanarkshire at a whopping 1,194.8MW.

In total, East Ayrshire is home to the 8th highest onshore wind Installed Capacity in the UK.

Recently, the number of wind farms gaining approval in the area has come under fire with locals saying that East Ayrshire is taking on an unfair share of the burden.

These figures show that whilst East Ayrshire produces lots of onshore wind energy, there are other local authority areas that produce far more.

English local authority figures are lower because of a Tory ban on subsidising onshore windfarms from 2016-2020.