THE closure of Longannet power station is a crime against the Scottish economy (“Scotland’s last coal-fired power station shuts down”, The Herald, November 24). Longannet generated 2.4 Gigawatts of base load electricity in all seasons and all weathers. No number of wind turbines, generating electricity only when the wind blows, will be enough to replace that.

In years to come, we will suffer brown-outs and black-outs, because of this decision and the Climate Change Act, which led to it.

Otto Inglis,

6 Inveralmond Grove, Edinburgh.

I READ with interest the letter from DB Watson (March 23) regarding the unreliability of wind generation. He is not the first by any means to highlight hard facts and verifiable figures relating to the problems in maintaining a constant and reliable supply of electricity across the national grid while relying primarily on renewables. His example related to Orkney but previous correspondents have argued similarly on a much wider geographic base.

I have yet to read in your columns any rebuttals to such letters from supporters of renewables, using similar facts and figures, rather than sweeping generalisations about total installed capacity and the perils of nuclear generation.

I, along with most of the population, am not a professional electrical engineer, therefore it would be comforting to hear from those supporters – especially the Government – an authoritative, verifiable fact-based explanation of how stability of supply can be maintained while nuclear and fossil-based generation capacity is aggressively reduced.

Lewis Niven,

78 Eastcote Avenue, Glasgow.