Energy realism

April 1:

When Lindsay Leask from Scottish Renewables talks about building more offshore wind farms to tackle climate change (your report, 25 March), I would ask if she has calculated the accurate CO2 footprint of doing so.

Not the one peddled by the Scottish Government or the Department of Energy and Climate Change but the real one – the one that includes turbines manufactured abroad and transported here.

The multitudes of foreign workers and machinery that will inevitably be needed. The filthy process of mining and producing the tonnes of rare earth minerals required in every turbine. The grid connection required and the decommissioning.

A Freedom of Information request confirms that none of these are factored into calculations. The reason?

Because they are not factored into fossil fuel generation calculations either.

Well, that’s all fine and dandy but fossil fuels are not sold to us as being green and clean, as wind power is.

Climate change is happening. If it hadn’t we would be dodging dinosaurs. I hate this scaremongering we have now that is a deliberate ploy to make us all feel guilty and make us accept expensive wind energy.

Changing our behaviour and reducing our energy consumption would probably do more good (and save us money on our energy bills) than Alex Salmond’s dream of blighting Scotland with thousands of turbines.

Source: http://www.scotsman.com/news/opinion/letters/energy-realism-1-3359713