ALLAN Wilson (“Threatened transmission charges must be fully scrutinised”,
Agenda, The Herald, April 11) sounds a valuable warning about further
disadvantage likely to be foisted on Scotland concerning the energy market
and electricity transmission charges in particular.
I was hoping that the review by the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA)
published in March would put an end to the 2p per unit surcharge on
electricity distribution which consumers in the northern half of Scotland
have to pay. Sadly, I have not found this in the CMA’s long and complicated
report.
The review was instigated by the Government because of an acceptance that
the electricity market is “broken”. The mantra of competition is thought to
be capable of fixing everything but merely serves to benefit the most
populous areas, principally London and south-east England. A broken
competitive market needs to be replaced with a socially just “market” where
consumers in the north of Scotland are granted the same dignity and the
right to be able to try to afford to heat their homes to the same level of
comfort as those elsewhere.
Climatic factors mean that consumption and therefore the cost is
significantly greater even in well insulated properties. To add a surcharge
on to this is an insult and a recipe for a new Highland Clearance. I trust
that our MPs and the new Scottish government will fight tooth and nail to
get this surcharge removed.
R J Ardern,
26A Southside Road, Inverness.
REMARKABLY, fuel poverty appears not to be a Scottish Parliamentary
election issue.
The recent Existing Homes Alliance report (“Two-thirds of homes miss out on
energy efficiency”, The Herald, April 11) estimated 1.5 million households
in Scotland continue to live in fuel poverty in cold and poorly insulated
buildings which impacts adversely on the health of our people. More than
half the houses in Scotland use electricity to heat their homes, whilst the
majority rely on electricity to drive heating boilers, pumps and control
systems whatever the primary fuel used.
The outlook is bleak for any improvement to this totally unacceptable
situation in the immediate future. Electricity prices remain high whilst
power cuts are now threatened through the lack of replacement of
decommissioned power stations. Energy policy, including the building of
major power stations, is not devolved from the Westminster government to
the Scottish Parliament and neither Longannet nor Cockenzie has been
replaced as a consequence.
Indeed, since 1997, successive UK governments have abandoned any policy
ensuring security of electricity supply, whilst failing to provide any
increased provision for, or take account of, the millions of additional
people who now live in Britain.
Worse, the sale of major power stations to foreign companies has guaranteed
high prices with the profits from electricity sales going abroad instead of
being reinvested in new infrastructure here.
Scotland is now at the end of the line, dependent on electricity imports
from England which are likely to be unreliable especially if there is any
interruption in existing power imports from Europe and/or a cold winter.
We are now approaching a critical period for electricity shortages and need
urgent action, as recommended in the reports of independent experts such as
Professor Younger of Glasgow University.
Above all, we need a pragmatic new energy policy, with associated financial
and investment support, allowing new electrical power provision to be
devolved from Westminster, including a more equitable policy of grid
access, pricing and usage.
We can only hope the new Scottish government prioritises heat and light
provision alongside a major programme of measures to improve energy
efficiency in the existing housing stock to try and drive down demand and
make heating less costly for households.
Elizabeth Marshall,
Western Harbour Midway, Edinburgh.
GEORGE Herraghty (Letters, April 7) makes important points about the
dangers of wind turbines to birds and bats (Letters, April 7) and the
statistics he quotes – 895 birds per turbine per year in Sweden – are
horrifying. However, his call to the wind industry to come up with figures
for Scottish turbine deaths will go unanswered.
No one in the wind industry has the slightest interest in collecting full
and accurate statistics about the negative impacts of wind turbines – be
they bird and bat deaths, noise complaints and associated health problems,
water contamination or even house price depreciation – because they know
such information will lead to restrictions on development and operation,
and hence profit.
The real question is why the Scottish Government, Scottish Natural Heritage
and the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency haven’t forced the wind
industry to collect this data, or better still, imposed a levy on the
industry’s excessive profits to fund independent scientists to monitor the
negative impacts of turbines on all living things, humans included?
The answer of course is that the wind industry has been highly effective in
lobbying an SNP Government which long ago realised the political advantage
of using Westminster subsidy to fund a green nationalist dream of wind as
the new oil.
Never mind that these damaging turbines would not be generating electricity
if they did not receive a 100 per cent subsidy for every scrap of power
they produced, never mind that the energy they produce is too intermittent
to be the mainstay of our electricity supply, and never mind that wind
energy contributed only 0.35 per cent to Scottish GDP in 2015.
Linda Holt,
Scotland Against Spin,
Dreel House, Pittenweem, Anstruther, Fife.
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