Potential winner

It would strike a chord with many voters, Conservative and others.

But energy policy is not devolved and stems from the Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition at Westminster, was inherited from the previous government and originates in the EU directive of 2008 on renewable energy. It is well established.

A blow against that inheritance would certainly be a marker of an independent policy, perhaps even an independence policy. It would also be supported by a groundswell of professional opinion that the current policy is counterproductive, does not lead to the CO2 savings which should be the objective of policy, and is liable markedly to increase energy costs and fuel poverty.

Norman Lawrie

Newton Port

Haddington

The Scottish Government’s obsession with providing all our electricity needs by 2020 from renewable power, primarily wind power (your report, 7 March), is frankly bizarre.

Environmentalists, in whose pocket the SNP seems to be, may trumpet the green credentials of such a move but they do not highlight the pollution of lakes in Mongolia with toxic and radioactive tailings from refining neodymium, a ton of which is needed in the average turbine.

Nor do they draw attention to the regressive subsidy attached to wind power which pushes more and more into fuel poverty while enriching the wealthiest in the land, nor the destruction of the landscape of the Southern Uplands, nor the felling of hundreds of thousands of perfectly healthy trees. To the nearest whole number, the percentage of the world’s energy that comes from wind turbines is: a big fat zero. Aye, by 2020, a’body will be oot o’ step but oor Alex.

(Dr) W Flood

Rowanbank Road

Dumfries