Keep the gas turbines going

SAM Craig declares that the tidal power is the way ahead (Letters, November 16); he evidently hasn’t reviewed the SNP Energy Plan issued in February 2023. The paper details an increase from the current 15GW of power available to the Scottish grid operators to 60GW by 2045 at a capital cost of around £270 billion (based on Vattenfall predictions) to meet a maximum demand of only 20GW.

However, as the SNP has little faith in an inefficient, unreliable technology, the paper also includes a case for 25GW of hydrogen-fuelled gas turbine plant to ensure that the lights stay on in Scotland when the wind fails to blow and the sun does not shine.

Why then introduce another renewable technology that has never been replicated since the French plant built in the 1960s? The answer is that the system does not work and, like the Severn barrage analysis, is too expensive. Note also the claim that “nuclear output comes at an exorbitant cost per unit of energy” is on shaky economic grounds. Hinkley Point C has a strike price of £93 per Mwhour which is in line with the demands from the renewable Sector that the £41 per Mwhour made to the Seagreen wind farm requires to be doubled for future North Sea projects.

What Mr Craig should have addressed is why the SNP fails to scrap the 45GW of additional wind farm units and rely on the gas turbines, sited at Peterhead, Longannet, Cockenzie and Hunterston, to keep the lights on in 2045. That would avoid desecrating the island of Skye, the Highlands and the Southern Uplands from a plethora of pylons and massive arrays of wind turbines in rural Scotland and would save £270bn.

Ian Moir, Castle Douglas.