DR Willie Wilson (Letters, February 12) appears to have swallowed the Scottish Government’s green propaganda wholesale. Hydro power and pumped storage are two different things. There is not enough potential capacity in Scotland for the latter to combat in any significant way the problem of intermittency with wind energy. Pumped storage will carry its own financial and social costs, the former being so great for such a negligible result that it weakens yet further the justification for the financial and social costs of the Government’s target for unlimited wind energy development.
Far from being seen as increasingly well- justified, the Scottish Government’s faith in pursuing wind energy is looking madder by the day. The EU has stepped back from imposing binding national targets for renewable energy after 2020 because it is evident the high energy prices caused by wind energy are already leading to deindustrialisation.
The negative effect of wind turbines on Scottish employment is resounding and far-reaching. Wind farms are largely owned, manufactured and operated by individuals and companies outside Scotland, if not the UK. Blighted landscapes harm local businesses which rely on visitor income. Subsidies of 100% which support wind energy could be used elsewhere in the economy to create far more bang for our bucks in terms of jobs for Scottish youngsters.
But, worst of all, the massive and ever-rising costs of incorporating unlimited amounts of wind energy into our supply system is causing long-term electricity price inflation which is being borne by every single family, business and government department. Spending in all these realms is already shrinking because paying the electricity bill has to come before anything else. When the Scottish Government has, by its own admission, no idea how many turbines there are in Scotland, or how many we need, it’s no surprise that no-one has bothered to work out how many nurses and teachers, for example, will lose their jobs because of escalating electricity costs.
There is no guarantee that the rest of the UK will continue subsidising Scottish electricity in the event of independence, and plenty of good reasons why it may find cutting the subsidies to what will be a foreign country economically and politically irresistible, especially as it grapples with its own rising energy costs. If independence leaves us picking up the tab for all our wind energy subsidies, our bills will rocket and many more jobs in the public and private sectors will go.
Linda Holt,
Dreel House,
Pittenweem,
Anstruther.
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