There are costs and benefits to everything in life. In relevant areas it is
the job of scientists and engineers to assess all the evidence for costs
and benefits, indicate where in their view the balance lies and if
necessary change it as evidence and improved understanding dictate. Lang
Banks (Letters, March 14) who, as WWF director in Scotland espouses an
environmental ideology, writes that he has sparked a debate.
Debates are usually about opinions and require the participants to
recognise errors in their argument. Unless Mr Banks is prepared to admit
his own ideology can be in error there can be no debate; instead we are
reduced back to Galileo and the ideological insistence of one party that
the sun went round the earth rather than the correct alternative.
Electricity is the lifeblood of our economy; the fundamental requirement of
any supply is that it must be secure. Even short outages can cause serious
economic damage and substantial loss of life. Although accounting for only
20 per cent of our emissions, electricity generation has been specifically
targeted for uncertain change by politicians anxious to demonstrate they
are doing something.
Introducing an intermittent, unreliable source of electricity in large
amounts, much favoured by Mr Banks, greatly increases the probability of
outage and the disastrous consequences that follow. I, like many
scientists, favour nuclear power and gas, because they have provided
security of supply over many decades.
Had we built two more nuclear power stations in Scotland 10 years back we
would have reduced Scottish generating emissions to almost zero and avoided
the known damage to landscapes and wild life. This Government dismissed
nuclear power by edict and thus without debate or provision of evidence.
Professor Tony Trewavas,
Scientific Alliance Scotland,
7-9 North St David Street,
Edinburgh.
Mr Banks is wrong to imagine that as professional engineers we ignored the
commitment to decarbonise electrical energy production south of the Border.
However, the Department of Energy and Climate Change envisages that some 60
per cent of electrical energy production will still come from thermal plant
by 2030. Moreover in England, the only large-scale source of low-carbon
baseload electrical energy production (nuclear) has thankfully not been
proscribed as in Scotland, therefore new plants are planned and highly
efficient, dispatchable combined cycle gas turbines have been built which
have less than half the carbon emissions of unabated coal-fired stations.
Importantly, neither is happening in Scotland, even although the Scottish
Government has rightly long acknowledged the need to provide substantial
new thermal capacity in the coming years while intermittent renewable
energy capacity grows.
In stark contrast, Mr Banks’s view is that Scotland should only deploy
intermittent renewable capacity, but that our supply would be secure
through interconnection as long as the remainder of the UK system is
secure. This is duplicitous. We would be pushing essential baseload and
dispatchable thermal capacity outside our national borders simply to
satisfy the narrow objectives of Mr Banks’s organisation, which in any case
opposes secure baseload nuclear capacity south of the Border too.
Furthermore, given the recent political mood in Scotland, it would be
extraordinary for an aspiring independent state to be entirely reliant on
its neighbour, and under what would be disadvantageous terms. For example,
when wind output is close to zero for sustained periods during winter
anticyclones, and demand is high across the entire UK, imports from the
south would come at a price.
It is also ironic that Mr Banks cites concerns over carbon emissions when
his organisation, both locally and globally, works hard to oppose nuclear
energy. Nuclear is the single largest supplier of electrical energy in
Scotland and has reliably delivered copious low carbon electrical energy
since well before climate became a political issue. As prominent climate
scientist Dr James Hansen has noted, large environmental organisations such
as WWF “have become one of the biggest obstacles to solving the climate
problem”.
We restate our considered professional opinion that any proposal to remove
all thermal plant from Scotland is irresponsible. It is pandering to a
narrow world view that puts an obsession with renewable energy and an
irrational loathing of nuclear energy above technically sound policy that
balances national security of supply, cost effectiveness and decarbonisation.
Professor Paul L Younger,
Professor of Energy Engineering and
Professor Colin R McInnes, Professor of Engineering Science,
School of Engineering,
James Watt Building,
University of Glasgow.
I note in your letters pages a difference of opinion between Lang Banks of
WWF Scotland and professors McInnes and Younger of the University of Glasgow.
The point at issue is the technical one of restarting the electricity grid
following a catastrophic failure. Although I am an engineer this is not my
area of specialism so I would not care to venture an opinion.
However, it would be fair to point out that Professor McInnes holds the
James Watt Chair of Engineering and is a Fellow of four learned societies.
Professor Younger holds the Rankine Chair of Energy Engineering and is a
Fellow of five learned or professional societies. Both are Fellows of the
Royal Academy of Engineering and have doctorates.
Neither the WWF web site nor his LinkedIn profile specifies Mr Lang Banks’s
academic or professional qualifications other than a BSc in biology.
Jack W Ponton,
Old Cottage Gardens,
Legerwood,
Earlston,
Berwickshire.
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