Scotsman letters
The Scotsman editorial (5 October) laments the melting of a patch of snow on a Scottish mountain and says this “sentinel” means “we must move towards net zero”. Why? The writer says that to get to this promised land we must capture some of the 0.04 per cent of CO2 that makes up the air and store it under the North Sea. This is exactly what the Energy Secretary Ed Miliband has set in motion with three projects costing £22 billion which will capture – wait for it – 2 pe cent of the UK’S CO2 emissions and store them under the North Sea and Liverpool Bay. This must rank as one of the worst wastes of public money ever conceived by a UK government, a government which removed winter fuel payments from 10 million pensioners to help fill in a supposed £20bn black hole.
Mr Miliband intends to increase the number of solarfarms threefold, double the number of onshore wind farms and increase fourfold the number of sea wind farms by 2030, while closing all gasfired power stations. As all nuclear power stations bar one will be closed, engineers are desperately trying to work out how they are going to keep the Grid stable at 50Hz. While turbines of coal and gas generators provide stable power, wind and solar do not.
Incredibly, one scheme already under way to stabilise the this brave new unstable grid and to minimise blackouts is to build over 100 giant flywheels weighing hundreds of tons, placed around the country and driven by giant lithium batteries. What could possibly go wrong?
William Loneskie Oxton, Lauder, Berwickshire
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. This is certainly true of politicians egged on by the green brigade. They have rushed the UK into adopting battery farms, e-scooters, e-bikes and electric vehicles, saying they will save the planet, while ignorant of the dangers – or maybe ignoring them.
Lithium-ion batteries are prone to thermal runaway, explosions and the resulting fires create highly toxic gases. The fires are hard to extinguish so often have to be left to burn out. London Transport and rail networks have banned e-scooters and e-bikes from their networks. Many countries have banned EVS from multi-story car parks. Ships carrying EVS have sunk, e-scooters and e-bikes have gone on fire in houses and flats.
Are councils not aware of the fire and explosion risk when they give planning permission to battery farms despite news reports and public opposition? Councils must immediately ban e-scooters and e-bikes from council flats and multistory properties before there is another Grenfell tragedy, and critically review planning applications for battery farms which pose a toxic gas danger.
Clark Cross Linlithgow, West Lothian
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