Electric dreams

You mention electricity-powered cars in your 17 September leader, concerned with our energy supplies.

Several nations’ governments have, seemingly simultaneously, declared policies of urgently switching away from automobiles’ internal combustion power plants by, say, the 2040s.

Their vague justifications, of improving air quality and reducing carbon footprints, are hardly convincing, in the UK at least. These objectives, although fashionable at the moment, are of unknown “durability” of relevance for the UK’S environment at least and are made impractical by problems of electricity generation and its storage, with the prospect of declining supplies from closures of fossil-fuelled and atom power stations, and very inadequate “batteries”, while wind and water turbines are no replacement .

The result is that the policy of shifting to electric cars would be like building a fleet of fishing vessels before the development of satisfactory nets for the catch. Moreover, what about the inevitable continued use of engines with internal combustion for all means of transportation of people, materials and goods?

The present electric car scenario recalls the abrupt, premature framing and passing of the Climate Change Acts (2008, 2009), exemplifying group think, which gripped nearly all of our parliamentarians a few years ago.

Now it is clear that that wellmeant policy has proved as costly and damaging as it is futile, since the UK is responsible for only 1.3 per cent of global CO2 output (Scotland 0.13 per cent), an insignificant proportion in the unproven hypotheses of anthropogenic climate changes.

For all these reasons, the planned switch from internal combustion engines carries the risk of expensive futility, which we, as an indebted nation, cannot and need not afford. We should await huge technical improvements in electricity generation and storage before rushing wastefully and headlong into adopting another herd of white elephants.

(DR) CHARLES WARDROP Viewlands Road West, Perth