Here's hoping the government has more sense than to swallow the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) report which you summarised (November 5). Apart from the clear errors in calculating the required installed capacity of off-shore wind farms (which I spotted in the full report) and an almost total reliance on unproven technology, the whole thing seems to say "if it costs the consumer more, who cares?"
Instead of using a gas-fired boiler to heat my house, I am to use electricity - which costs three times as much per unit of output OK, I'd be happy to use a ground-source heat pump, which is three times as efficient, so the energy bill would be no more. But who is going to pay the cost of the machine, which I certainly can't afford?
And the IPPR proposes doing away with nuclear power which - despite what is said - is cheaper than any of the alternatives. And it repeats the old nonsense about no-one knowing how to deal with nuclear waste. The solution has only been known for about 40 years - deep burial in waterproof cladding, just as the French and Finns are doing.
And can these guys not get away from the idea of "burning" to get power. This inevitably produces carbon dioxide. Certainly, if you have grown what you burn you have saved some CO2 in the process. But why not grow trees and reduce CO2 and then get your power from nuclear or water power which produce no nasty greenhouse gases?
One minor good point is that it does seem to approve of hydropower. Is there any chance it would support new pumped storage schemes - like the Loch Lomond one which the environmental lobby killed some years ago?
G I Crawford, 10 Gailes Park, Bothwell.
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