Scotland’s wild places must be protected
The points made by William Thomson (Letters, September 3) about encouraging energy production at a local level are very pertinent if we are at all concerned about cutting greenhouse gas emissions. But this is not going to happen to a large enough extent while most effort and funding is currently directed towards large-scale onshore wind farm development.
Energy conservation is the poor relation in the public debate about reducing emissions. There is no end of talk about how much good it would do, but a distinct lack of sufficient incentives to see it through.
The big bonus in reducing how much power we need to use is that the UK Government’s target of 15% of energy use from renewable sources becomes that much easier to reach. This, in turn, would mean less need for massive wind turbines on the Scottish hills.
We know from a recent Scottish Natural Heritage report that there is strong public support for the conservation of wild land throughout Scotland. Yet by continuing support for large onshore wind developments, government renewables policy would appear to concentrate on helping the shareholders of multinational energy companies to even greater profit, at the expense of our wild places.
We need a robust policy that protects our wild land from intrusive developments, coupled with incentives that massively increase energy conservation measures throughout Scotland.
Davie Black, Ramblers’ Association Scotland, Kinross
5 September 2008
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Tags: Wind power, Wind energy
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