I’m pleased that my Agenda article (March 11) has sparked a healthy debate
about the transition of Scotland’s electricity system.
On the issue of restarting the grid (Letters, March 13), National Grid made
clear in its evidence to the Scottish Parliament’s Energy Committee just
this week that Longannet and Peterhead are not needed to “black start” the
Scottish region of the UK grid in the event of a catastrophic system-wide
failure.
National Grid made clear it would be possible to bring the grid back up in
Scotland through interconnection, albeit marginally slower than the rest of
Britain. They also emphasised that there has never been a system-wide
failure of that magnitude.
Professors McInnes and Younger (Letters, March 12) argue that Scotland
would be importing polluting fossil fuelled electricity from the rest of
the UK if it generated most of its power from renewables by 2030.
Crucially, this ignores the fact that the UK needs to de-carbonise its
power sector at roughly the same rate as Scotland by 2030, according to the
Committee on Climate Change, to cost-effectively hit legally-binding
targets under the UK Climate Change Act.
While it’s true that, on some days, power would flow from south to north,
this is entirely routine, and the balance will still be in Scotland’s favour.
It is clear that Scotland’s power sector is in transition and the
commercial realities weigh heavily against building new fossil fuel or
nuclear generation in Scotland. This suggests we should embrace Scotland’s
renewables strengths as part of a UK grid.
Lang Banks,
Director,
WWF Scotland,
The Tun, 4 Jackson’s Entry,
Holyrood Road,
Edinburgh.
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