ANDREW McKie’s suggestion of a simple way for government to tackle the
cost-of-living crisis (“There is one simple way for government to tackle
this awful cost-of-living crisis”, The Herald, April 26) prompts me to
suggest a simple way of vastly reducing energy cost and somewhat reducing
global warming both indirectly and directly. The situation would be utterly
transformed by the simple expedient of reverting to coal firing for
electricity generation.
Apart from the relative cheapness, the use of coal-generated steam for
producing baseload would minimise the use of horrendously expensive and
polluting diesel and gas-turbine power for rapid-response augmentation. As
correspondents who know what they are talking about have repeatedly pointed
out, the more reliance there is on wind power for baseload the more acute
this problem becomes.
The high visibility of pollution from coal burning obscures the fact that
it is less pernicious than invisible diesel and gas pollution, and it is
rarely acknowledged that the visible pollution directly inhibits the
ingress of solar radiation. However, our western puritanical suspicion of
anything that is either convenient or cheap ensures that a solution that
would be both isn’t even to be considered.
Robin Dow, Rothesay
0 Comments