SSE has made an eleventh hour appeal to the Government to include its planned Shetland Island wind farm in a programme designed to support offshore wind projects.

SSE is hoping that the Government will soften its stance against subsidising onshore wind and allow it to bid in an auction for a slice of a £290m funding pot to support the 103 turbine project.

The Government has decided that no more public money should be paid to build onshore wind turbines in the UK.

Instead this spring’s auction for subsidy contracts, known as Contracts for Difference (CfD), will support developers of less-established technologies, such as offshore wind.

But SSE says wind projects on the Scottish islands have more in common with their offshore counterparts than with onshore wind farms and should be treated as a developing technology.