Renewable past

The recent spate of articles and correspondence in your paper on the subject of renewable energy might suggest this is relatively new concept.

James Nasmyth, the engineering son of the Edinburgh artist Alexander Nasmyth, wrote in his autobiography published in 1883 an interesting idea on the subject.

With reference to the moon and its effect on tides he wrote: “Then there are the tides, so useful to man, ...what business she transacts! She lifts hundreds of ships and barges filled with valuable cargoes, up our tidal rivers ..... She performs a vast amount of mechanical drudgery;..and now that we understand the convertibility and conservation of force, we may be able to use her tide-producing functions through the agency of electricity. It is even possible that the tides may yet light our streets and houses!”

If this inventive engineer were alive today, he would be in the forefront of those trying to harness this reliable source of power.

JOHN CHALMERS Canaan Lane, Edinburgh

‘Green’ and social welfare policies both cost much money, but there is a conflict between themwhichonlypoliticiansin power can resolve.

Your report (Scotsman, 2 October) on the repeated calls for a ban on Scottish fracking highlights that conflict, since we do depend for our financial wealth upon safe exploitation of our natural resources, of which petroleum is a vital example. We are a relatively poor nation now, and in debt.

On ideological grounds of preserving Scotland’s perceived world leading role in fighting climate changes, ‘green’ interests call for a total ban on fracking.

They thus threaten our wealth, perhaps without considering the impact of a ban on government’s ability to meet needs in important public spending.

The SNP, evidently depending on Green Party support, should seek to resist their call for a total fracking ban, or accept greater dependency on money from the Barnett formula, which would lapse with separation of Scotland from the UK: the Scottish Government can and must choose a policy in the nation’s best interest. (DR) CHARLES WARDROP Viewlands Road West

Perth The letter from Michael Riley of Scottish Renewables was yet another propaganda piece in support of his organisation’s end (Scotsman, 2 October).

He squeezed in the usual virtue-signalling platitudes but, as ever from such vestedinterest bodies, there is absolutely no mention or solution to the vital question of where we will obtain the base load supply of electricity when the wind doesn’t blow. This happens very often in anticyclonic conditions, in winter, when demand for electricity is at its greatest. Also in yesterday’s edition there was the article stating that the Scottish Government is about to impose a complete ban on fracking.

Despite the scare stories that Green zealots continue to promote, all of the evidence tells us that the process is completely safe and brings enormous and much-needed economic benefits.

If fracking is banned, it will be for cowardly, politicallydriven reasons and will be another, possibly fatal, blow to the nation from the disastrous absence of a sound long term energypolicyforscotlandand the whole of the UK.

DAVID K ALLAN Hopper Gardens, Edinburgh Michael Riley’s letter in defence of the wind industry provides no evidence for what he claims are the “economic and social benefits to Scotland” and fails to identify the true costs of decarbonising electricity generation in Scotland. For those of us who get out from behind our desks and love our mountain landscapes the real evidence of the environmental costs is seen in the industrial scale developments on the slopes and summits of our once beautiful highland glens.

Sadly, what makes matters even worse is that the technology used to develop this industry in Scotland will rapidly become out of date and in any normal market for energy would be rapidly replaced by fewer more efficient wind farms in areas where they would be less damaging to the landscape.

However, it appears due to the contracts written in blind haste we will be stuck with this uneconomic high cost technology for 25 years leading to economic, social and environmental damage to our country.

ALAN J BLACK Camus Avenue

Edinburgh