Funding the green revolution
G Weir (Letters, June 29) makes the claim that “no political party has answers as to the delivery of the healthy, wealthy Scotland that we all want”. The simple explanation is that the massive debts to achieve a Green Transition results in “Going Green means Going Poor”. Just look at the £150 billion debt to achieve a Green Revolution (paper by Climate Emergency Review Group in 2020). Update the figure for inflation and interest rate costs and the bill is probably over £250 billion.
Increasing the windmill capacity from 13GW to over 58GW results in a further debt of about £135 billion but, if the A9 project is a typical example, that will spiral out of control to cost over £270 billion and no one points out that, if the wind fails to blow, there will still be no electricity generated no matter how large the increase in capacity.
Then there is the cost of 25GW of gas turbines to keep the lights on when the wind fails to blow with no estimates of the debt required to install such a project. No mention of the cost of electrolysers or the huge number of leak-proof vessels to store the hydrogen safely to ensure no repeat of the Hindenburg accident. In theory it should be around the initial cost of the windmill project but, based on the ferry fiasco, that may well result in a further £400 billion of debt inflicted onto the bills of Scottish consumers.
The problem is that until all voters accept the claim made by Humza Yousaf in the chamber of the Scottish Parliament that “climate change is the number one issue in Scottish politics” the question of how to fund a Green Transition will continue to sit at the bottom of every in-tray at Holyrood.
Ian Moir, Castle Douglas
0 Comments