I NOTE with interest your columnist Pinstripe's article on the failure of the Scottish economy to match that of rUK in terms of growth, fiscal deficit and company start-up rates (“Ripping Scotland out of UK would be Brexit on steroids”, Herald Business, July 10). However, the article did identify why the economy lagged rUK on so many parameters.
Could a major reason be because Holyrood has given planning permission for 12,000 MW for a grid system that has only a maximum demand of 5,000 MW? The 7,000 MW over-capacity comes at a capital cost of £20 billion (based on the Thames Array data) yet the excess plant contributes nothing to the economy. Would it have been better for Holyrood to divert the billion-pound costs to infrastructure projects that would give the Scottish economy a competitive edge over our competitors ?
There is also the question of how does 7,000 MW of excess generation make a profit on the capital invested by the shareholders. There is no other industry or service that makes a profit if it does not produce an output required by the customer. Yet there must be a mechanism, when Holyrood is inundated with planning requests for further power stations at Altnaharra, Firth of Tay, Islay and Carsphairn. If the profits come from the green levies then, as the well-off, the wealthy and the rich receive massive pay-outs from the Feed-in Tariffs scheme, the Renewable Heat Incentive and the Renewables Obligation Certificate schemes that far exceed the contributions made by these groups, can it be that the only major group who pay into the levy funds but receive nothing in return are the 40 per cent of Scots living in fuel poverty – a poverty that Holyrood pledged to eliminate by 2016 ?
Ian Moir,
79 Queen Street, Castle Douglas.
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