I read with interest Christine Metcalfe’s comments on the proposal for a North Sea electricity grid (Supergrid a pipe dream, Letters, July 26). Her critique rested primarily upon a single point, that "electricity is most economically generated as close as possible to where the demand is". She advances an argument proffered by successive UK Governments since the 50s: if you are to build a power plant, build it near consumers. This makes sense if you are constructing a major power plant, where you import raw materials to generate electricity. However, it makes little sense if you are seeking to capture a natural resource, whether it be wind, wave or tide. That is why the UK transmission charges must distinguish between ‘major’ point source power generation and small-scale renewable power generation.
In the next decade ahead, Scotland will experience electricity shortages. Climate change legislation, certain to be tightened after the December UN gathering in Paris, will see the end of Longannet and like coal-fired power plants (unless the Scottish Government is willing to commit to carbon capture technology). The Scottish Government, for political reasons, has also decided that Scotland’s two remaining, zero carbon-emitting, nuclear power plants will close. As a result, Scotland will become a net electricity importer. Renewables are part of the solution, but they are bedevilled by issues of intermittency, and the reality that not everyone wants a windmill in their garden. Setting windmills offshore will address some – but by no means all - of these problems.
However, sharing electricity across European grids mitigates against renewable intermittency (as indeed do pump action hydro plants which can store the ‘excess’ electricity). In Metcalfe’s world Scotland would become an energy island, isolated from all, neither benefitting from the export of its electricity nor from its import. In such a world, the hills will indeed be alive with the whirr of turbines, for we shall need many, many more. And there will be pylons aplenty.
A North Sea grid has costs, but it offers extraordinary opportunities for Scotland. Sharing electricity across the North Sea addresses renewable intermittency, reduces excess electricity generation, helps address climate change, provides employment in ports across Scotland and in the medium term will moderate the ever increasing cost of electricity. Surely worth exploring?
Ian Duncan
MEP, Edinburgh
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