Fossil fuels

Most people would agree that we cannot stop using fossil fuels overnight. Like many countries across the world, the UK is striving to reduce its reliance on fossil fuels and to increase energy creation from renewables

Progress is being made: for example, the UK no longer burns millions of tonnes of coal each year in its power stations. But the transition to renewables takes time.

What we need now is a practical calculation of how long that period of transition is likely to be. Impatient environmentalists say "The period of transition should be as short as possible!" But that does not help us much.

Numbers plucked from the air are no use either. We need to see a calculation of the length of the transition period, based on, to take only one example, the rate at which oil and gas heating is being converted to electric heating. At present about 97 per cent of our heating burns oil and gas.

Conversion will require millions of electric boilers and thousands of electricians. That would suggest a transition period of a good many years. And that is only one factor. We need to consider transport and industry in the same detail. And so on.

This calculation is important because major decisions hinge on it. Thus a transition period of 30 years could be taken to justify opening the Cambo oilfield. The reasoning would be: we shall need supplies of oil and gas for the next 30 years, therefore it is better to use local supplies rather than rely on imports from countries like Algeria.

Of course, some people will say "Thirty years is too long for a transition period." But then the onus is on them to show what the figure should be and how it is calculated.

Arguments about the great issue of climate change are nothing more than empty rhetoric if people ignore the practicalities of how we transition to renewables and do not bother to calculate the number of years that the transition is likely to take.

LES REID Edinburgh