Closing questions

The Scotsman article of 25 January which highlighted a £4.4 billion reduction in exports to RUK contained a quote by secretary for the economy Keith Brown MSP that “the closure of Longannet power station had an adverse impact on Scottish exports”.

The first deduction from the claim by the Economic Secretary is that 8,500MW of wind turbine capacity failed to compensate our export potential for the loss of 2,400MW of the coal-fired plant. Why, then, did Holyrood accept the proposal by energy minister Paul Wheelhouse to add a further 3,000MW of renewables by 2020 when the technology fails to meet the economic needs of the 35 per cent of Scots living in fuel poverty ?

The second deduction is that our MSPS should have insisted on due diligence being carried out in the closure of the Fife plant, especially when Gary Smith of the GMB warned Holyrood in 2016 of the consequences that would hit Scottish GDP from the shutdown of Longannet power station.

Surely, if CO2 emissions were a factor in the plant closure, then authorising Scottish Power and Ineos to modify the plant to operate on imported USA shale gas should have been the preferred solution ?

The impact of the power station closure raises the question of the future of the plant at Grangemouth. Why has not a single MSP declared that the policy on phasing out the use of gas over the next decade does not include a ban on the imports of shale gas to Grangemouth?

IAN MOIR Queen Street, Castle Douglas