There are between 3,500 and 4,000 wind turbines in Scotland. Visitors coming up the A1 pass the numerous wind farms on the Lammermuirs; those coming over Carter Bar are treated to a fine view of these and others in the central Borders. Why have we covered so much of our countryside with these machines?
They do not to give us cheaper electricity. Turbine builders receive a subsidy, guaranteed for 25 years, which doubles the cost of the power they produce. They do not give us a reliable source of energy; several days of near-zero wind can occur at the coldest times of the year with all these turbines generating essentially no power just when it is needed most.
No, these turbines are supposed to help ‘ decarbonise’ our energy production, reducing our carbon dioxide emissions and so ‘save the planet’ from global warming. But can they really?
The world’s greenhouse gas emissions in 2017 were 32,500Mte (million tonnes). Britain’s were 375Mte and Scotland’s about 10% of these. So Scotland contributes about 0.115% of the global total. What is this likely to mean in terms of a contribution to increased global temperatures, and so how much could Scotland’s ‘decarbonisation’ contribute to climate change amelioration?
The UN climate model has been used by the Danish statistician and environmentalist Bjørn Lomborg to predict temperature changes resulting from changes in carbon dioxide emissions.
He has estimated the impact of having all the signatories to the much-vaunted Paris climate agreement fulfil their (non-binding) commitments by 2030 and continue to honour them until the end of the century. The model predicts that the reduction in whatever temperature rise would otherwise have occurred by then would be a mere 0.17°C.
The impact of all the EU commitments, including Britain’s, would be 0.053°C. Britain’s share of EU emissions in 2017 was 11.2%, so it seems reasonable to pro rata this temperature reduction, making the UK contribution to saving the planet 0.00594°C. The UK commitment is to an 80% reduction in in emissions so if 100% reduction were possible this would increase the amelioration to 0.00742°C.
So what of Scotland? Since our emissions are about 10% of the UK’s, we are responsible for around 0.000742°C of whatever temperature rise may occur by the end of the century. This is the amount by which complete elimination of all our greenhouse gas emissions from all sources could reduce the postulated increase in global temperature. It is also an amount which is so small as to be literally unmeasurable
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Prof Jack Ponton, FREng, January 2019
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