SNP’s green dream is running out of power

HEADS forever turned by the latest fad, the Scottish Government threw all its eggs in one basket as we embraced renewable energy.

As wind farms – perhaps rather more accurately described as subsidy farms – festooned unspoilt hills, Alex Salmond waxed lyrical about jobs bonanzas and predicted Scotland would become ‘the Saudi Arabia of renewables’.

We were assured the lights would blaze confidently here while our virtuous green electricity would be exported to unenlightened England.

The reality has proved very different. The fickle wind cannot be relied on to blow when we want to turn on our kettles and TVs and precisely when industry wants to operate.

Even when it does blow, it’s often too strong. Then our carpet of turbines becomes a useless sea of windmills generating nothing more than millions for their owners through the byzantine ‘constraint payment’ system.

Longannet, our last coal-fired power station, shuts next month. Green zealots are no doubt looking forward to sitting piously in the dark, knowing one of our great natural resources – coal – has finally been sacrificed to their climate change obsession.

So the rest of us will have to lean heavily on the gas-fired power station at Peterhead, modest hydro- electric resources and EDF’s two venerable nuclear stations at Hunterston, in Ayrshire, and Torness, in East Lothian, the latter of which has just had its planned lifespan extended.

What a ridiculous position for a modern country to find itself in. Blind pursuit of dogmatic, ‘right on’ ideology leaves us with the very real prospects of ‘brownouts’ where lights dim and delicate electrical equipment such as computers risks irreparable damage.

Amidst all the SNP sanctimony over its renewable credentials, the reality is that the lack of a long-term energy policy has left us with two nuclear stations – commissioned in 1976 and 1988 – as the bedrock of an essential of modern life.

And even the SNP may find its ‘unassailable’ poll lead under threat if the lights start going out between now and May’s election.