DURING the election it was surprising that the subsidy costs of renewable energy did not feature in the debate, although one area now under discussion is protection for wild places from the spread of industrial wind turbines. However, the question that has not been answered by our MSPs is why does Scotland require more wind turbines when there is already12,000 MW of installed generation plant for a population that only requires 5,000MW to meet maximum winter demand ?
The 630MW Wind Turbine Array in the Thames estuary was built for £1,800 million, or £3m per installed MW. On that cost basis 7,000MW of over-capacity on the Scottish Grid network means that there is £20 billion of plant that simply accrues Constraint Payments without delivering any economic advantage for the Scottish economy and merely adds to the financial household costs on the 40 per cent of Scots living in fuel poverty.
£20 billion could have provided much-needed resource for the NHS, education and social welfare. Why build 22 turbines at Altnahara when the money could be diverted to a new computer system for Police Scotland?
Ian Moir,
79 Queen Street, Castle Douglas.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel