Hydro history

As a reader with close Walkerburn connections, I was particularly interested in Chris Mccall’s Future Scotland article encouraging community support for the proposed Red John “Highland hydro scheme that could be a game-changer for renewables” (29 June).

I would not like it to be forgotten that, way back in 1920, Ballantyne’s of Walkerburn pioneered just such a pumped storage scheme to serve their mill and the village, pumping water from the Tweed up to a specially built reservoir on Kirna Law – almost certainly the first scottish hydro scheme outwith the Highlands.

It may also be of general interest that while the article refers to earlier hydro schemes in the Highlands, it makes no mention of what was probably the first in Scotland, set up by the monks of Fort Augustus in the 1880s to serve their abbey and the neighbouring village.

REV JACK KELLET Dyers Close, Inerleithen

Steuart Campbell’s proposals (Letters, 2 July) that efforts to curtail our carbon dioxide (CO2) output to save the world from catastrophic climate change, predicated on the notions that hydrogen for powering transport can be made safe and that we must set a “good” example to other nations, are overly optimistic and, anyway, unnecessary.

Global temperatures have been essentially stable despite two decades of rising atmospheric CO2 levels, which argues against a crucial role for the gas in provoking global warming.

We have failed to secure agreement by the major terrestrial CO2 emitters to reduce their CO2 output. There are huge, though evidently unquantifiable, sub-marine CO2 emissions in volcanic gases.

All of this make curbing global output of CO2 an enormously costly fool’s errand.

Attempts to substitute hydrogen for fossil fuels are obviously full of developmental pitfalls in learning how to safely use that flam- mable, explosive gas, whose production’s substantial ‘carbon footprint’ anyway nullifies any possible benefit to our climate. Thus, Mr Campbell is proposing that, for vital energy, we replace, at vast cost, a relatively safe natural gas by using hydrogen and nuclear electricity generation, before essental developments for enhanced safety. His suggestions are, therefore, for the present, non-starters.

CHARLES WARDROP Viewlands Road West, Perth