The natives of the Lewis Island know wind – sometimes too well. Every winter the Atlantic gales come blasting across the northern tip of Scotland’s Outer Hebrides. The wind hardly slows down even after striking land; in the island’s marshy interior, gusts regularly exceed 160kph. Everyone stays indoors but the sheep. Tourists arrive in summer, lured by mild temperatures and unspoiled countryside; even so, there’s rarely a calm day. “The weather here is changeable”, says Nigel Scott, spokesman for the local government. “But the wind is constant”. The brutal climate could finally be Lewis’s salvation. The place has been growing poorer and more desolate for generations, as young people seek sunnier prospects elsewhere. But now the energy industry has discovered the storm-swept island. The multinationals AMEC and British Energy are talking about plans to erect some 300 outsize wind turbines across a few thousand hectares of moorland. If the 500 million-pound project goes through, the array will be Europe’s largest wind farm, capable of churning out roughly 1 per cent of Britain’s total electrical needs – and generating some badly needed jobs and cash for the people of Lewis.