Voting Labour will not protect rural Scotland from Big Energy

The Herald Scotland

6 days ago

Cllr Gregson seems under the misapprehension that rural communities can be bought and will accept massive industrialisation of their environment if Big Energy just pays them more. We have to assume he is talking about future developments and not those already constructed. He fails to understand that many simply do not want more concrete and steel engulfing where they live. The truth may be hard for him to understand but these energy companies are building to export elsewhere as it is not needed in Scotland. It is a clear case of profit before people and we watch in horror as millions of CO2 absorbing trees are hacked down, hundreds of thousands of tonnes of carbon holding peat is dug up, habitats destroyed, creatures killed and displaced and the rural way of life sacrificed on the dubious altar of "green".
It is entirely possible that his own party's actions – removal of England's community veto on wind developments, a change to the Energy Act to make it easier for developers and even harder for the opposition to have their voices heard, the mass roll-out of its own renewables programme, nuclear and new gas – will mean south of the Border won't need to buy the global investment companies' increased wind energy, resulting in even more turbines being switched off, higher energy bills and increased fuel poverty.
Cllr Gregson sits on a planning committee at Highland Council that will decide whether to approve massive substations in our communities and if they should object to highly controversial pylon lines striding through our glens and where rural folk live. In this article he appears to back this infrastructure and it concerns some in the targeted areas that he has a bias towards supporting the very industrialisation that they are fighting against.
He should think very carefully as to whether he can sit on the planning committee and fairly determine an application for the infrastructure he would appear to support in his article.
Lyndsey Ward, Communities B4 Power Companies, Beauly.
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Energy future is a mirage
The National Energy Systems Operator (NESO) has published its Future Energy Scenarios. It presents a wish list of immediate, intermediate and long-term goals that are idealistically presented as a series of "waves" from now through to the magical 2050 "Horizon Wave" when we could all be basking in the affordable, balmy, sunlit uplands of Net Zero.
It lists a huge array of technological advances that will supposedly lead us there. Among them is impractical and uneconomic carbon sequestration, overcoming the inherent costs and dangers of hydrogen production, transport and storage, a massive uptake of heat pumps and electric vehicles, energy-intensive smart technologies, battery storage, further expansion of intermittent wind and solar, bioenergy and upgraded electricity transmission infrastructure. It has yet to provide its costings but provides convenient wriggle room by stating "how costs translate to consumers will depend on policy choices" and confusingly concludes that "readers should not place any reliance on the contents of this document".
NESO calculates that this towering edifice of innovation will reduce electricity demand and costs to consumers by 18% by 2050, built primarily on the flimsy foundations of massively subsidised, foreign-owned renewables. This looks more like a mirage than any form of reality and presupposes that carbon emissions are the principal cause of our ever-changing climate.
Surprisingly there is only passing reference to nuclear power. This is a strange omission considering Energy Secretary Ed Miliband's recent pronouncements on the long-overdue ramping up of nuclear power supply and investment. There is no mention of the Holy Grail of limitless clean energy, nuclear fusion which, once the searing temperatures it generates can be contained, will be the principal means of providing for a predicted three-fold increase in global energy demand that will render many transitional technologies obsolete.
Neil J Bryce, Kelso.
Say no to Net Zero
While Chancellor Rachel Reeves attempts to restore our damaged economy, with calculations of cost and outcomes, and reports on these, the [[Net Zero]] project plunges madly on without question. If indeed CO2 is the problem, what is the target for emissions, and what progress are we making? Never mentioned. The entire [[Net Zero]] thing is no more than a man waving a placard saying that the end of the world is nigh.
If that man was a street lunatic one could laugh and pass on, but he is a government minister by the name of Ed Miliband, seemingly out of control with a blank cheque book.
Where is the accountability for the vast sums spent and still demanded for a project that never has to justify itself, and has targets conveniently in decades ahead, and warnings that have not come true?
Malcolm Parkin, Kinross.
Ed Miliband, UK Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change (Image: PA)
Market confusion
I notice in The Herald recently that a number of properties have been "brought to market". What does this mean?
I suspect that if my own humble abode were brought to market, it would have a prominent "for sale" sign outside. Are "brought to market" properties ever offered for sale? Who decides where the line is to be drawn so far as the use of these terms is concerned?
I , for one, would be most disappointed if my own property was to be considered of insufficient quality to be brought to market.
David Edgar, Biggar.
Timely remark
The recent letters on correct grammar reminded me of a conversation in my workplace when a new employee was being teased by his workmates that he wasn't a full time-served tradesman. His response: 'Am urr a jiner!'
Eric Macdonald, Paisley.