Readers' Letters

Like John McLellan (Perspective, 1 August), I spent yesterday calculating the cost to us of Patrick Harvie’s New Energy Performance Certificate which will be required before we can sell our house.

Obviously we’d need to replace our newish gas boiler with a heat pump, but we’d also apparently need new radiators and piping as our current ones wouldn't work with a heat pump. As for double glazing, well, unfortunately we live in a conservation area so we have to add on planning costs – and I won’t even start on insulation for our Victorian house – of doubtful value anyway.

All this work would have to be done before we could sell, so there would also be the costs of a fairly hefty loan. Finally, the work could only be done if there were sufficient skilled tradesmen to carry it out. Anyone tried to get a plumber recently? Perhaps the most efficient thing to do would be to demolish all old stone houses and tenements, keeping just a token one of each to show future generations what buildings used to be like, a sort of latter day Skara Brae.

However, these changes to our heating system would leave us utterly dependent on electricity which currently costs three times as much as gas, partly because of the charging system, not because it actually does costs three times as much. Then I hear the grid is not really up to the job any more. It’s difficult to add in new suppliers, and a massive increase in demand would strain the system and lead to power cuts. Ever since the 1970’s oil crisis, we’ve tried to mix our heating provision such that we could stay warm through a power cut so, sins of sins, we have some gas fires. Obviously they would have to go. Maybe this is all part of a secret plot to get old people like us to die of cold and so further ease the green crisis.

I have to assume the more than 50 per cent of people who backed Patrick Harvie’s proposals in the recent WWF opinion poll do not ownhouses.

Judith Gillespie

Edinburgh

Blair point

Like him or loathe him, no one can say three-times election winner Tony Blair does not have his finger on the electoral pulse.

He makes the valid point that the UK accounts for as little as 1 per cent of the world’s pollution. He asks why, then, should this country impoverish its people by suicidal Net Zero gestures. It is the pollution-producing giants, China, and others, that should be making the grand gestures, not the UK. Perhaps, as he alluded, we could play a middleman part, supplying finance for the necessary work in the places that need drastic change. In the meantime the UK could drastically adjust the Net Zero targets to a reasonable time scale .

Apart from nationalists, whom I instinctively distrust, I would be happy at any government of any hue taking Mr Blair’s advice. It is merely a bonus that therein lie the keys to Number Ten.

Alexander McKay

Edinburgh

Broken Britain

According to a recent poll, only one Scot out of eight thinks that the next five years of life in the UK will be better than the previous five. Even the confidence of this small minority must be shaken by the latest long-range forecast from the Office for Budget Responsibility. The UK’s accumulated government debt will increase from 100 per cent of GDP at present to 300 per cent by 2050. This can only mean further decades of austerity and falling living standards.

Some of the optimists about the UK economy also hold a peculiar faith in the competence of the UK government. While endlessly reminding us about delayed ferries, they even go so far as to recommend an end to devolution and a return to direct rule. This would be by the Westminster government whose own centre of expertise on major infrastructure projects, the IPA, recently gave the overspent and delayed HS2 project an “unachievable” rating, meaning there are “major issues... which at this stage do not appear to be manageable or resolvable”.

HS2 no longer includes the Leeds leg, is about five years behind schedule and is now estimated to cost some £50 billion more than its original estimate. That is getting close to the entire annual budget of the Scottish Government.Perhaps advocates of the union, so keen to accuse independence supporters of emotionalism and fantasy, need to remove the rose-tinted specs and face the reality of broken Britain?

Robert Farquharson

Edinburgh

Electric boogaloo

BBC broadcaster Martin Geissler said on Good Morning Scotland that he had reduced his carbon emissions by buying an electric car.

Wrong. He has actually increased his emissions.

A comparison by Volvo of the overall emissions of an electric versus petrol car, including manufacture, concluded that emissions from the electric car were only less after it had been driven for some 70,000 miles. By then, it would probably need a new battery anyway.

That said, there is a city in China which has banned all internal combustions engines, with the result that the air quality is excellent.

Adair Anderson

Selkirk, Scottish Borders

Energy shackles

The belated announcement that after 15 years of campaigning the best UK location for carbon capture has eventually been given the go ahead, but with no actual details, can’t gloss over the utter failure of the UK’s energy policies. Delaying the transition into renewables has set the North East of Scotland back around ten years compared to our European competitors, who are roaring ahead with the development and manufacture of new clean energy technologies. Although energy policy is reserved, the Scottish Government is investing £500 million into North East transition.

The UK Treasury has raised over £300 billion from oil and gas in Scotland’s territorial waters and 75 per cent of Europe’s hydrogen supply is centred on the North Sea, yet Scotland, which produces the bulk of the UK’s oil, gas and renewable electricity, has no electrolyser manufacturing or wind turbine production as successive UK governments and the UK banks have failed to invest in Scotland’s renewable future.

The Neart Na Gaoithe offshore wind farm off Torness is owned by EDF, the French state energy company, whereas Denmark takes a 20 per cent stake in every offshore wind field. Norway’s state owned Equinor company is the world leader in wind turbine manufacturing.

One wind farm alone, Berwick Bank, will produce more energy than is required for every household in Scotland, but as Scottish Renewables has pointed out, under UK regulations a Scottish offshore wind project would pay £38m a year to use the electricity network, while an identical wind farm off England’s south coast would receive a £7m payment for the same service.

Scotland has the energy but we need the economic and taxation powers of a normal country to fulfil Scotland’s vast renewable potential.

Fraser Grant

Edinburgh

Sincere critic?

In response to Rishi Sunak granting 100 new North Sea oil and gas licences, Humza Yousaf is strongly critical, accusing the Prime Minister of reckless gambling. I wonder: how long before the SNP claims responsibility for an uptick in jobs and the economy in Aberdeen and the northeast? In the run-up to the next Westminster or the next Holyrood election?

Martin Redfern

Melrose Roxburghshire

Amazing nature

Mother Nature is indeed incredible. In 2014 in the run-up to the independence referendum, we were warned by the Better Together campaign that there was little, if any, offshore oil and gas production left.

A mere nine years later and it is announced that “hundreds of new oil and gas licences” are being awarded by the Tory UK Government to exploit a resource that was apparently exhausted.

It is truly remarkable and indeed a modern miracle in that in less than a decade Mother Nature has turned a depleted resource into one which is now at the forefront of securing the UK’s energy future.

Alex Orr

Edinburgh

Licence to drill

Rishi Sunak confirmed hundreds of new licences for oil and gas extraction will be granted in the UK.

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Good news. We must develop our own resources not be dependent on other countries.

Elizabeth Maranatha

Pure greed, let’s pillage all we can out of Scotland’s waters before they inevitably leave the UK political union.

Tricia Wright

Great news.

Geoff Werner

Spinning blades

Aileen Jackson’s claims are wrong (Letters, 31 July). America’s largest circulation broadsheet, USA Today, debunked thoroughly the “old wind turbines can’t be recycled” myth, pointing out these largely fibreglass structures can be remade into everything from crash barriers to insulating materials to the resin game pieces I make myself.

As an exasperated Professor Karl Englund of Washington State University has said: “Windmill blades can be recycled – we have proven this over and over again.” The Danes recycle 98 per cent of the material from wind farms. The supreme irony of Scotland Against Spin’s long discredited codswallop is it’s largely their own “spin” of recycling decades-old debunked internet memes amongst eco-Luddites.

Mark Boyle

Johnstone, Renfrewshire