Scotsman Letters: National Grid and Ofgem accused of being biggest barrier to deployment of renewable energy

While it is true that the wind has not blown on some days, G. M. Lindsay (Letters, June 17) is overpessimistic on energy storage as Amp Energy is establishing Europe’s largest green energy storage complex across three sites in Scotland, with the first in Ayrshire due open next year.

It is claimed Scotland will be in the top ten global offshore wind markets with up to 42GW deliverable before 2035

Also, SSEN Transmission has announced plans to invest £10bn in the electricity transmission network across the north of Scotland to enable connection for ScotWind’s offshore wind projects in order to benefit ten million UK homes. Scotland will be in the top ten global offshore wind markets with up to 42GW deliverable before 2035. Scotland’s net exports of electricity saw an increase in 2022 with an estimated wholesale market value of £4 billion.

​However, the privatised UK National Grid has not kept pace with the required infrastructure investment. Apart from charging Scottish renewable energy producers the highest connection charges in Europe, the grid is weak, especially in energy-rich areas like the Highlands and Islands. For example, Orkney’s powerful wind turbines constantly have to be turned off when they could be operating at maximum capacity and creating very cheap power.

​Scottish farmers are accusing the National Grid and Ofgem as the biggest barrier to the deployment of renewable energy generation, and reaching our net zero targets, as they are being denied permission to build renewable energy facilities to reduce their crippling costs. And if they do get permission, they are charged ten times what English suppliers have to pay to connect to the grid.

​It is a national scandal that Scottish businesses and domestic consumers are left paying the highest bills in the world whilst living in a country rich in energy potential. Meanwhile, the National Grid has distributed £9 billion to its shareholders in the last five years.

Fraser Grant​, Edinburgh

Natural morality

A report published by the Diocese of Oxford estimated that average attendance at Church of England Sunday services in 2022 was 691,740. At the Regional Media Centre’s festival on Monday, June 12, the Archbishop of Canterbury said he considered the decline in church attendancea personal failure on his part.

The idea that morality flows from religion has received a major setback in the public perception in recent years with the well-documented incidence of paedophilia and child molestation among Catholic and Church of England priests – suggesting that even the devoutly religious are far from immune from immoral behaviour.

Generations are now growing up with the realisation that morals are freely available in religion-free form – they no longer need the carrot and stick of eternal bliss or eternal damnation to behave morally. Being acquainted with them, without any further motivation, a person will be impelled to pursue and promote them.

Doug Clark, Currie, Midlothian

SNP on the march

Gerald Edwards (Letters, June 17) once again attributes the progressive decline in the Scottish "NHS, education, transport and economy", which are acknowledged pan-UK phenomena, to the indisputable incompetence of a small cabal within the erstwhile Sturgeon government.

He ignores the UK bigger picture and willfully or otherwise fails to acknowledge the substantial achievements of previous labour and SNP devolved administrations. The across-the board-deterioration of the UK polity is agreed by most political scientists to derive from four decades of neo-liberal capitalism which has poisoned every domain of the "society" which Margaret Thatcher declared "did not exist".

Is he seriously asking your readers to to believe that trillions of pounds indebted, Brexited, boom-and-busted and a morally perjured assembly in London with fewer and fewer friends in Europe and beyond and a failing currency has not in a massive way led to the incremental contraction of the quality and quantity of public sevices and the economy of its colonial/ regional territories, in this case Scotland? The polls are robust. The march continues inexorably.

Can I reassure Mr Edwards in the most prophetic terms that we are not, as he fearfully anticipates, ”going to get more of the same at the next Holyrood elections". Neo-Scexit forces are on the march in the populist and political movements.

Andrew Docherty, Melrose

… or on self-destruct

Those of us holding fundamentally different views to the SNP and in complete opposition to the senseless break-up of the UK can now relax. No longer do we need to point out constantly the frightful economic damage to the people of Scotland by the destruction of the UK and the quality and intellect and even morality of many in the SNP proposing this course.

The SNP are in self-destruct mode on steroids and our efforts are no longer required. We need only sit back and observe.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

Soay sheep fears

I am appalled by the recent account of the suffering of the Soay sheep on St Kilda and the Scottish Government saying they will not care for them as they do not come within the Animal Health and Welfare Act of 2006, saying they are an unknown and unmanageable wild animal.

How did those sheep get to St Kilda in the first place. Obviously they had to be taken there, they are not simply wild animals that wandered onto the place after years of migration. If the Scottish Government is prepared to condone their suffering, surely now the SSPCA should step in, as their remit covers the whole of Scotland.

When St Kilda was populated the sheep would have had a purpose in being there, for their wool and their meat but no-one lives there now and is reliant on them, so why are they left there and why is their care not seen to by the National Trust for Scotland, who look after St Kilda?

Mary Brown, Taynuilt, Argyll

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