Costly renewables
At last Joyce McMillan accepts that ‘independence is irrelevant until we fix the climate’ (Perspective, October 13). However, it appears that SNP supporters have yet to recognise that ‘Scotland has no massive energy wealth’ since electricity is three times more expensive than gas, hence not only is the era of cheap energy over but renewable generators come with enormous capital costs.
This leaves all political parties with two major financial problems. The first revolves around the warning from Vattenfall that green projects have doubled in price, meaning a green revolution now comes with £600 billion of debt, replacing gas boilers in a flat is now £80,000 and to upgrade rural properties comes at a cost of £66,000.
The second problem is that installing 60GW of wind output to meet a maximum demand of 20GW comes with a debt of around £300 billion.
How, then, can any political party eliminate the cost-of-living crisis with average energy bills of around £3,000 a year, increased tax to clear the £900 billion Just Transition debt and eliminate the £1 billion black hole in the current SNP budget when debt repayments means COP26 costs sink Indyref2 in a sea of red ink for the next 70 years?
Ian Moir, Castle Douglas
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