The constraints payments loophole, in which wind turbine operators can state their price for not supplying electricity, provides a quintessential vignette of the huge misjudgment made by governmental authorities leading to the wind farm scandal.
It has been damaging to our environment and finances for next-to-no-returns in power, reductions in CO2 output or long-term job creation ("Anger at wind-farm loophole", The Herald, May 25).
Since, moreover, the UK and EU cannot usefully influence climate change, when most other industrial nations produce greenhouse gases unconstrained, it is time for the Department of Energy and Climate Change to shed the latter function and concentrate on developing a realistic profile of electricity generation for our future needs.
That policy should be based not on politicians' uncritical whims, as exemplified by the broken reeds of today's renewables, but upon experts' advice on engineering and commercial aspects of power production.
The vast sums of money almost completely wasted at present on wind turbines is desperately needed for useful purposes, upon which rational policies for energy production can be based. If there are good ideas for enhancing the effectiveness of renewables, the research and development can be supported using public money, dependent on expert appraisal.
We cannot help by offsetting global climate change, we urgently need rational policies for future power production: that must become our priority.
Those with vested interests will complain but remember, we are in terrible debt and running out of power.
Dr Charles Wardrop,
111 Viewlands Rd West,
Perth.
Struan Stevenson MEP's description of Glasgow as "a leader in green innovation" may very well be accurate in some respects ("With clear vision, Glasgow leads the way in the green revolution", The Herald, May 24 ).
However, the city, currently aspiring to the title of the EU's European Green Capital for 2015, has effectively been squatting on another council's territory to dump its rubbish since August 2012.
Planning conditions, and a subsequent, minuted agreement between Glasgow City Council and South Lanarkshire Council, laid down that Glasgow's 13-year-long period of landfilling at South Cathkin should cease at that date.
Cynically, Glasgow City Council is defying planning conditions, and abusing the hospitality of a neighbouring local authority in extending the life of a site with an undistinguished operational record while vying for the prestigious title to which Mr Stevenson refers.
George Hunter,
2 South Cathkin Cottages,
Quarry Road,
Rutherglen.
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