Letters

THERE is rightly growing anger at the ever-increasing steel forests of pylons, turbines, and substations scarring our countryside to feed distant demand. Yet a far graver threat looms unnoticed: the monstrous battery parks propping up intermittent wind power.

To bridge one windless day in Britain, estimates demand 100-200 gigawatt-hours (GWH) of storage – enough to power six million homes for 24 hours. That’s millions of electric car-sized batteries. A week-long lull? Multiply that nightmare several times over.

These aren’t gentle giants. They devour lithium, cobalt, and nickel, ripped from the earth in ruinous, exploitative mines across the DRC, Indonesia, and China. Rivers

poisoned, landscapes gutted, 40,000 children toiling in cobalt mines – all to prop up Britain’s hollow “clean” energy mirage.

Worse, lithium-ion battery parks are ticking time bombs. Fires, like those in California and South Korea, rage uncontrollably, spewing toxic fumes and defying suppression. Who’d welcome such a menace near their home?

The cost? Astronomical. The UK’S push for vast battery capacity by 2030 carries a price tag of tens of billions – every penny heaped onto taxpayers and households through crippling bills.

Wind power is peddled as cheap and green, yet the Labour and SNP governments push ahead with this reckless agenda, blind to its failures. Sky-high energy costs – the highest in Europe – plunge 5.6 million households into fuel poverty, close businesses, and drive reliance on imported energy, materials, and finished goods from nations scoffing at our environmental standards, gutting our net-zero ambitions and impoverishing us all. This isn’t progress; it’s folly, a betrayal of families and industries for a green dogma that exports emissions and imports ruin. The truth – rampant mining, hazardous storage, obscene costs – demands exposure. Until politicians dismantle the myth of wind as a silver bullet, their policies deserve our utter contempt.

Ian Lakin

Aberdeen