Letter Struan Stevenson: WE are growing accustomed to the wearisome propaganda that spouts from the wind industry’s mouthpiece Renewable UK, but its claim that “wind power provided enough electricity to meet the annual needs of more than 8.25 million homes last year” fails to tell the whole story. Ofgem, the energy regulator, has warned that as we continue to shut our old, coal-fired power stations like Longannet to meet EU CO2 emission targets, Britain’s electricity security of supply is on a knife-edge. Any surge in energy consumption during a severe cold snap would plunge the country into blackouts. The reason for this catastrophic energy shortfall is not difficult to find; under SNP plans no new nuclear plants will be constructed in Scotland, due to the refusal of the SNP Government to give planning approval and the hysterical opposition from the Greens and their fellow-travellers who think the next Fukushima-style tsunami is about to hit the UK. If we are going to tackle the looming energy crisis then we must also exploit our massive reserves of shale gas, which would help us to reduce our dependency on expensive imported gas. With an estimated 200 trillion cubic feet of shale gas deposits discovered in Lancashire alone, enough to power Brit ain for 65 years, we could be looking at the biggest energy find since North Sea oil in the 1960s. But it is typical of the feverish nature of the climate change debate in Britain that this massive find has been either entirely ignored or robustly attacked as anti-green.
Herald 6th Jan 2016 read more »