Letters / Renewables lead to food banks
I read with interest Danus Skene’s attempt (Viking: the horse has bolted; SN 11/4/15) to mitigate the SNP’s position on renewable energy, in particular, relating to the Viking Energy wind farm project and linking it to future well-being of “the planet”.
It seems that every time a politician expels hot air on this topic, they illustrate, with great clarity how little they understand what they are talking about.
For Mr Skene’s information, the “Viking Energy horse” has, most definitely, not bolted. The “stable door”, in the form of a 600MW, £0.5 billion submarine cable, remains firmly closed.
That will not change before the election and any new government involving the Tories and/or UKIP as the governing group will, almost certainly, rule it out.
Whether or not the planet can withstand permanently rising fossil fuel use isn’t very relevant to whether we should attempt to reverse the ‘arrow of time’ by reverting to windmills and water wheels since we shall not be dependent on burning fossil fuels for ever.
Within 20 years a new generation of very safe, affordable, nuclear (thorium) power plants will start to become become available, with enough fuel to power humanity for ten thousand years.
It is certainly the case, as Mr Skene accepts, that power station energy is (vastly) cheaper than renewable sources and, sadly for the renewables industry, that is likely to remain so.
If and when that turns out not to be the case, then will be the time to revert to large scale wind and water power and not before.
He claims renewable energy will become cheaper and fossil fuels will become more expensive, however, he omits to mention which improvements will halve or third the renewable energy price to make it competitive and whether that will occur in the foreseeable future.
Conventional power station and fossil fuel extraction technologies have not stood still, nor will they. In the last nine months, the price of oil has halved, gas is down by 28 percent and coal by 16 percent, due to the advent of revolutionary new drilling technology.
The price of renewable energy, by contrast, has not fallen, at all, and gives little indication of doing so. Why should it? Government wants it installed and is prepared to make consumers pay, whatever the cost.
Mr Skene continues: “With climate change considerations in mind, responsible government must push from here on to expand the renewable sector.”
Really? Renewable energy was twice and three times the price of fossil fuel energy before the oil, gas and coal prices fell, and fuel poverty and food bank use are soaring. Surely people need cheaper energy, not dearer?
Unless the subsidy required to make renewables viable is paid from taxes instead of directly from consumers’ bills, “expanding the renewable sector”, as Mr Skene advocates, will lead to higher electricity prices.
Higher electricity prices lead, directly, to increased levels of fuel poverty which Westminster now, officially, recognises is much worse in island communities like Shetland than elsewhere e.g. the central belt of Scotland.
We often hear of people in fuel poverty facing the desperate dilemma, “heat or eat”. In the absence of ‘heat banks’, they will choose to buy “heat” and “eat” from food banks, so increasing the use of food banks.
It’s a straightforward logical chain; more renewable energy leads to higher energy prices, lead to increased fuel poverty, leads to increasing need for and use of food banks.
“Responsible government” would, surely, seek to make energy affordable for its citizens to minimise fuel poverty and use of food banks?
After all, our industrial competitors are not crippling their industry and consumers with unaffordable renewable energy. Countries such as Japan, China and India are all dramatically expanding their coal-fired power station capacity. Even the super-green Germans are building coal power stations and their carbon dioxide emissions are rising.
However, the United States is switching from coal to gas-fired generation because the price of gas there is half what it is here. Their electricity price is half ours, too, and their carbon dioxide emissions are back to 1994 levels, and falling.
Yet Mr Skene’s party, the SNP, in the face of their own expert study which said the risks were low, has banned the use of modern drilling technology in Scotland where large ‘unconventional’ gas resources exist.
Furthermore, the UK is responsible for about two per cent of global carbon dioxide emissions (China’s increase by more than that, annually) and Scotland for about a tenth of that so how much difference would it make to ‘climate change’ if Scotland reduced emissions to zero? I don’t know, either, but it will be vanishingly small.
Then why on earth, we may well ask, would any “responsible (Scottish) government push from here on to expand the renewable sector”, instead of protecting its citizens from privation and the presently-existing ill-effects of extreme weather?
John Tulloch
Lyndon
Arrochar
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