April 18, 2011
Letters, Scotland

Doubts over viability of wind power

The Scotsman, scotsman.com 18 April 2011The Scotsman, scotsman.com 18 April 2011

Ed Miliband pointed out that Alex Salmond’s renewable energy plans will require an upgrade of the electrical grid far beyond our means in an era of tight budgets (your report, 16 April).

The spectacular growth of renewable energy sources, driven by high subsidies and green rhetoric on global warming, has meant the national grid is already struggling to cope.

The costs and technical obstacles soar with offshore wind facilities and the problems of tailoring this highly variable source of power to our needs may prove intractable.

If reducing emissions is what truly motivates Mr Salmond, he should bin plans for the expansion of renewables and build gas power stations to replace those based on coal and fission.

ALEX Salmond declared that Scotland can be powered by renewable energy in just nine years with 130,000 new jobs and Scotland able to sell vast reserves of surplus electricity to the rest of the UK (your report, 15 April).

Why should we build more and more turbines, which each get a subsidy of at least £275,000 a year, just to sell the surplus? No wonder business leaders are saying that he is living in “cloud cuckoo land”.

Conventional power plants provide electricity when required, whereas wind turbines also produce electricity at times of zero or low demand, and it cannot be stored.

Green zealots frequently point out that Denmark produces 20 per cent of its generated electricity from wind turbines. True, but what they conceal is that the Danes only consume half of that and the other half goes to waste or is sold at rock bottom prices.

The renewables industry only survives on taxpayer subsidies and is unsustainable.

THE determination of certain politicians to pursue the unrealistic dream of a Scotland powered entirely from renewables by 2020, relying on intermittent wind power or basically experimental and unproven sources, will result in this country having the most expensive electricity in Europe – providing we can keep the lights on at all.

The engineers and scientists who actually have an expertise in these matters realised long ago that wind power is a ridiculously inefficient and expensive way to produce electricity which wouldn’t exist without heavy taxpayer subsidy.