Energy costs

Stan Grodynski (Letters, 6 April) is yet another in a long line of correspondents who ignore the impact of energy costs in an independent Scotland.

As pointed out by Geoff Moore (Letters, 31 March) the demise of subsidy support from English consumers would result in a yearly increase of £750 in Scots electricity bills to an annual figure of around £1,200.

Power companies in Scotland currently use 26 per cent of their mix from renewables to supply their consumers, but the Holyrood vision of achieving 100 per cent of demand from renewables by 2020 would require the annual cost to double to around £2,400 a year. Has Stan Grodynski ascertained the increase in the number of Scots in fuel poverty from the current 40 per cent figure arising from these energy policies ?

In addition, to constrain 10,000 MW of wind turbine output over the summer would mean an added financial burden, in the worst case scenario, of around £6 billion a year on Scottish consumers, yet no MSP ever highlights such a blow to those in fuel poverty.

Is it because they refuse to address their failure to eliminate such poverty by 2016 as Holyrood pledged to the people of Scotland?

IAN MOIR Queen Street, Castle Douglas

Could Stan Grodynski explain the mathematics of Iceland’s population (less than one tenth of Scotland’s) being “more comparable” to Scotland’s than that of the United Kingdom’s (ten times Scotland’s)?

Perhaps he could also give us some sound reason for his prediction that oil prices will double in the next four years.

As for renewable energy – do we really just have “the potential to lead Europe, if not the world” ? According to Scottish ministers we’ve actually been doing that for years !

The reality is that Norway for decades has had over 20 times Scotland’s hydro power, and even that’s pretty small by world standards.

Almost every other aspect of renewable energy generation has been introduced elsewhere, some of it (wind by Denmark and tidal by France are just two examples) for at least half a century.

Scotland more recently has been a useful development ground for mostly foreignowned methodology, particularly offshore. We do have some good marine sources of renewable energy and a leading “homegrown” developer but let’s just consider that the cost of offshore generation is about £3 billion per gigawatt and the cost of a sub-sea connection to Europe would be about £1 billion per gigawatt.

A gigawatt is a fleabite in comparison to Europe’s energy generation requirements, so who’s interested ? DR A MCCORMICK Terregles, Dumfries