World needs fossil fuels to prosper
Sir, – After COP26 in Glasgow, countries were asked to submit stronger plans to reduce emissions by 2030 ahead of COP27 in Egypt, to ensure global warming was kept below 2C and nearer 1.5C.
Only 23 countries out of nearly 200 had submitted improved emission reduction targets before the deadline. The Russian invasion of Ukraine has the world rushing to secure supplies of coal and other fossil fuels. Panicking, the green apostles say that coal will only be burned in the short term. Yes, that will be right.
Germany is taking 27 coal-fired plants out of mothballs and China is building another 60 coal-fired plants to add to the 1,110 it already has. At COP26, China and India pushed negotiators to dilute a resolution to accelerate the “phase-out” of unabated coal power to a much weaker pledge to “phase-down” the use of this fuel.
In 2021, China’s power generation from coal and gas remained at 71%. Countries have long realised that net-zero is a pipe dream, and that renewables are unreliables, and they need dependable fossil fuels to drive their economies.
Clark Cross, Springfield Road, Linlithgow.
Sir, – There has been a lot in the press lately about industrial wind turbines.
However, a growing number of folk are beginning to understand the real truth behind the faux green money spinners.
They are realising that electricity prices were rising before Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and it’s because the government has over-deployed on weather-dependent energy and not enough on our own reliable generation that’s left us exposed to market volatility and overseas conflicts.
Today I spoke to an electrical engineer who left his last company after having to work on wind developments. He was completely disapproving of the adverse impacts on the environment, and the cost and unreliability of wind turbines.
He said something that I thought was so sensible that policymakers should seriously consider doing the maths on it.
If only the eye-watering sums of money in subsidies, constraints, 24/7 back-up etc handed over to the wind industry by the government but paid by us consumers, was spent on the homes the wind developers purport to supply with electricity, then those homes could be insulated, have replacement windows and doors and their own micro-generation in communities and on their own homes.
Who would win?
The consumer, with lower bills and home-produced electricity– and most definitely the environment and wildlife.
Local citizens would also save thousands of their own pounds spent employing experts to help them fight monster turbines and years of stress the process entails.
The local authorities and residents are having to deal with thousands of pages of wind applications on a regular basis, and possible public inquiries are massively expensive and uses scant council resources.
The Scottish government would no longer have to appoint and pay staff to consider these applications on appeal after objections by statutory consultees or hold expensive public inquiries – another huge money saving.
The losers would be the ruthless wind multinationals who would have to find another cash cow to milk.
Lyndsey Ward, Torgormack, Beauly.
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