A Scotland free from non-renewable power stations would descend into chaos – Herald

Lang Banks paints a bucolic image of a Scotland free from any non-renewable
power stations (Agenda, The Herald, March 10).

Yet the crux of Mr Banks’s argument is that Scotland can afford to dispense
with all its baseload and dispatchable power sources (which account for
about two-thirds of all electricity used here) and rely on imports from
England whenever the wind doesn’t blow.

However, the vast bulk of English baseload and dispatchable power – as in
all of Europe – will remain non-renewable, for want of sufficient
alternatives at the required scale and cost. Under this scenario, we will
not genuinely de-carbonise Scotland’s electricity supply at all. We will
simply import fossil and nuclear power from England, and export the jobs
currently held at Longannet, Hunterston and Torness to power stations south
of the border.

Moreover, replacing the huge low carbon nuclear output of Hunterston B and
Torness with a mix of intermittent wind and imported fossil fuel backup
will actually increase the carbon footprint of Scottish power consumption.
We will also have greatly increased the insecurity of power supply in
Scotland in times of greatest need, reliant as we will be on just three
cable connections: the two existing connectors are incapable of replacing
the sum of Scottish baseload and dispatchable output and even when the new
Irish Sea link is completed in 2017, the total capacity will be
insufficient to reliably avoid blackouts in the (inevitable) event of
generation outages south of the Border.

No Scottish government that presides over such a descent into chaos is
likely to last in power long. But that needn’t concern Mr Banks as the
Scottish public get no vote on the leadership of pressure groups.

Professor Paul L Younger, Rankine Chair of Engineering and
Professor Colin McInnes, James Watt Chair of Engineering,
School of Engineering,
James Watt Building (South),
University of Glasgow.