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Written by Steuart Campbell
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Tuesday, 18 December 2007 |
Switch to wholly renewable energy supply is merely wishful thinking
Professor Geoffrey Boulton (your report, 12 December) appears to believe, like the SNP, that Scotland can ultimately obtain all its electricity from renewable sources. Surely he knows this is impossible: generating more than 20 per cent of our electricity from such erratic sources would destabilise the grid. This view also contradicts the Royal Society report which he helped write. This concluded that it was desirable to have "a diversity of supply sources" and it doubted the feasibility of supplying even 40 per cent of electricity from renewable sources.
Prof Boulton also describes nuclear power as "ultimately unsustainable", contradicting the Royal Society report, which concluded that "the choices are clean coal (including biomass co-firing), gas and nuclear" and encouraged the UK and Scottish governments to keep open the nuclear electricity generating option inthe interests of diversity, security of supply and the suppression of greenhouse gas emissions.
I don't know how far into the future he was looking, but nuclear energy, especially deploying fast reactors and fuel recycling, could supply electricity for thousands of years.
I call that "sustainable" for even beyond the foreseeable future.
STEUART CAMPBELL
Dovecot Loan
Edinburgh |
