YOU report, correctly, that there was no new onshore wind capacity completed in Scotland in the second half of 2019 (""Wind power growth at a standstill", The Herald, April 6). This is part of a narrative being pushed by Scottish Renewables to create a panicked reaction in government and planning authorities that climate change targets might be missed.
There is more than eight gigawatts of wind capacity in Scotland with planning consent, roughly half-and-half onshore and offshore. This compares with just over 9GW currently operational. So even without counting any of the nearly 4GW awaiting a planning decision, the potential is there for wind generation capacity in Scotland to nearly double.
Why is it not happening? In the fake commercial world of electricity supply the companies with consent to build capacity are reluctant to do so without guarantees that they'll make lots of money. They do not want to compete in a market. They want electricity consumers – that's every one of us – to guarantee their profits for decades to come and to pay for the costly undersea and overland connections needed to transmit electricity from distant sources to where it's actually consumed. What happened to risk-taking capitalism?
Dave Gordon, Scone.
A SUCCESSFUL outcome from the hoped-for Glasgow climate conference, COP26 – whenever it may take place – is predicated on at least two likely-false assumptions.
First, that it could achieve its intention to prevent or at least offset future adverse climate changes and, secondly, that there will be enough money to pay for it.
The outcomes of all the previous climate talking shops, such as that in Paris in 2015, were marked by lack of any real progress in meeting their objectives. Only voluntary agreement was reached, and by nations responsible for only a minority of the world's greenhouse gas output. There is no reason to anticipate any greater success from COP26.
The costs of and damage from the Covid-19 pandemic look like ruining the economies of most of the nations at present intending to participate in the proposed Glasgow conference.
World leaders must believe that their priority now must be to overcome the pandemic, and any recurrences, rather than to chase the wild goose of seeking prevention of climate changes hypothetically predicted as a possibility decades hence.
The only financial benefit of the present "plague" could be to allow politicians a face-saving justification for putting the climate policies preceding and any stemming from COP26 on the back burner.
Charles Wardrop, Perth.
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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.
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