Just hot air?

David Morris questions the allegation that renewables have an adverse financial and

environmental cost (Letters, 31 August). Well, in the press last week was a new study suggesting that UK wind farms are killing 80,000 bats annually.

Equally, I’d like to see his evidence that renewables’ costs are rapidly falling. Maybe he saw the misleading adverts in 2017 which stated that offshore wind bids had dropped from £117 to £57 per

megawatt hour. Greenpeace withdrew the adverts after a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority.

He claims that renewables will become the principle source of power. Doesn’t he understand that it takes huge amounts of fossil fuel to deploy a renewable system? For example, iron ore for wind turbine towers needs to be gouged out of quarries

in Australia and Brazil then crushed, sorted and put in a blast furnace. The ore or finished steel is shipped to turbine factories in Germany or Denmark. The finished turbines are shipped to UK ports then by road to wind farm sites, where giant cranes erect them. No doubt over 99 per cent of all the energy for these processes comes from fossil fuel.

Could it ever be done purely by renewable energy?

GEOFF MOORE

Alness, Highland