April 21, 2022
Letters, Scotland

Make the wind operators pay for the energy bills pain

Letters | The Herald | www.heraldscotland.com

I was aghast when I read the CEO of Scottish Power’s comments regarding escalating energy bills and his suggestions of who should be paying more (“‘Give poorest £1,000 off bills’ says Scottish Power boss”, The Herald, April 20). Scottish Power is one of Scotland’s wealthy grid operators – the other is SSE. Both have built many wind turbines across Scotland and propose even more as though more wind power will solve the problem when we have no wind. That is akin to believing that increasing a fleet of sailing ships will mean more reliable transport when there is no breeze to fill the sails.

We don’t need more turbines – the ones we have now are costing us billions on our energy bills for the guaranteed subsidies, the constraints to switch off, the 24/7 necessary back-up required and the huge grid upgrades needed to manage their erratic energy. Thousands of UK wind turbines have made absolutely no difference to climate targets either.

Scottish Power and SSE have been paid a large portion of the £1.1 billion constraints bill to not generate because of low demand. Had we invested the massive sums paid for this weather-dependent energy source a decade ago in our own home-produced reliable generation we would now have an affordable and secure energy supply. We would not be exposed to prices or conflicts overseas.

Now the current energy policy farce has predictably blown up, those enjoying the biggest spoils, like wind operators, are not stepping up and accepting some of the responsibility for the mess we are in. Remove green levies from energy bills now as it is a regressive tax. Remove all public money payments to unreliable energy sources because what they provide is not available on demand and if, for example, the wind fails we are exposed to massive costs like £4,000 MWh to keep the lights on. Fine them when they don’t produce energy or compensate the consumer for the back-up costs. Surely the policy makers can see that wind is an increasingly unacceptable burden on consumers and taxpayers.

Lyndsey Ward, Beauly.

* YOU quote Keith Anderson of Scottish Power as claiming “the energy crisis is beyond what I can deal with” . Note that for years, when the unit price of gas was around 4p/unit, the renewables industry has been claiming that wind energy is cheaper than gas, which raises the question that, as the output of wind turbines is unaffected by oil and gas tariffs, why have Scottish energy bills escalated when Holyrood states that around 98% of our electricity is generated from renewable sources?

Ian Moir, Castle Douglas.


URL to article:  https://www.wind-watch.org/news/2022/04/21/make-the-wind-operators-pay-for-the-energy-bills-pain/