THE widely-held view that renewable energy is cheap is a delusion which is so effectively promoted by the renewables industry that most of the public have been duped into a belief of what is no more than a myth.
That we need to cease our dependency on fossil fuels as soon as possible is true, but it
does no service to promote false expectations among the public: the vast majority, understandably, are ignorant of the nature of electrical energy and the physics of producing, transporting and storing it.
There is no shame in this ignorance, which is so vividly illustrated by Iain Mcintyre (letters, September 16) suggesting that energy, like data, could be stored in ‘the cloud’. The shame should be directed at the industry and naive politicians who promote the myth of cheap wind power. If the euphemistic term ‘cloud’ applies to the vast pump storage schemes that are required to store energy to compensate for when the wind does not blow, then the public need to know this. Especially significant, since as I write this, Scotland is importing more than one gigawatt of energy from
England.
We cannot prepare properly for the future if we are unaware of the truth. Everyone – business, industry and politicians – have to set in place plans of how to manage a highcost energy future, since it will impact on every aspect of our lives if we don’t. Investment in energy conservation should be a priority.
Norman McNab, Killearn
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