The Scotsman reports that the Glen Rosa should have been finished eight years ago and is four times over budget (31 January). The Tories, Labour and the Liberals rightly criticise this but they miss the essential point. The reason the Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa were years late in build and four times over budget is quite simply the decision to use supposed“green”liquifiednatural gas (LNG) as a bi-fuel instead of tried and tested marine gas oil (MGO), which is similar to the oil used in domestic gas boilers and is low in particulates and other pollutants.
Unlike LNG this is a safe fuel tostore;lnghastobestoredat -162C and it takes three times as long to refuel a ship with LNG as MGO. The fuel is imported from Qatar, over 7,000 nautical miles away, taking weeks, to the Isle of Grain on the Medway and then transported by road to Greenock. Transporting LNG by sea is incredibly complex and the vessels themselves are difficult to build, service and maintain, and of course they use diesel propulsion, as do the road tankers on their weekly 800-mile round trip.
The decision to use Finnish company Wartsila’s complex bi-fuel diesels in the ferries made the construction of them on time impossible. For example, the engineers had to install 12,500 pipe sections and 186 miles of wiring in Glen Sannox. If the contracts for Glen Sannox and Glen Rosa had specified tried and tested marine diesels they would have been launched years ago. So who decided they should be powered by a supposed “environmentally friendly” fuel?
Calmac didn’t want it. So who did? Who are the guilty men or women? I suspect this was a political decision by a cabal in the SNP government as part of their misguided policy of decarbonisation which makes things less efficient, often less reliable and hugely expensive. And as often happens with failed political projects, noone is ever held accountable.
Just as the drive for net zero has resulted in our hills being plastered with wind farms, tracks, power lines and millions of tons of concrete, and too much of our fertile farmland with substations and dangerous battery yards in the childish claim of “saving the planet”, so the islanders of the West coast have been let down by the deluded philosophy of trying to reduce Scotland’s miniscule carbon footprint further. When will they ever learn?
William Loneskie Oxton, Lauder, Berwickshire
0 Comments