Bishop Hill Green messages
Feb 25, 2015 Energy: grid Greens When I discussed Scotland's energy supply on Radio Scotland a few weeks back, I shared the airwaves with a Green Party spokesman. I pressed him (I forget his name) on how energy was to be generated on cold still nights, and was told that we needed research into energy storage technologies.
That's fair enough, although the obvious corollary is that we are stuck with fossil fuels in the meantime.
It's interesting therefore to see the green movement declaring today that we just don't need any fossil fuel generation at all. This comes in response to the Conservatives' warnings that we risk the lights going out.
SCOTLAND must build new power stations if it wants to keep the lights on beyond 2025, opposition leaders will warn today.
A massive new gas-powered plant could be built at Longannet which looks poised to shut down within the next decade, according to the Conservatives.
But environmental bodies have dismissed the claims, insisting that Scotland can continue to power itself from green sources like wind and hydro.
Clearly the greens know that the lights will go out if the wind fails to blow on a winter's night unless we have conventional generation capacity on hand. It's interesting to ponder then why they persist in telling journalists that we can allow all these power stations to close. And why the journalists don't call them out on it.
Reader Comments (53)
"And why the journalists don't call them out on it."
- cos they like Pachauri; and Cameron know pretending to be green & going with the religion GETS YOU LAID
go to a Greens meeting and ask some engineer type questions ... and see how many girls come to you and say "hey wow"
I was in Norway recently and surprised to see wind turbines in various prominent locations. Norway not only has huge quantities of gas, but also has the perfect topography for generating adequate electricity from water. Quite what the bird-killers contributed to the mix mystified me. At one place, with the temperature well below zero and thick snow covering the ground, the hillsides outside the town were covered in wind-turbines, none turning, in the absence of a hint of a breeze.
Now, I see that the Scottish environmentalists claim to be in favour of "hydro" (except that greenpeace explicitly opposes it), but, despite its mountainous character and all those glacial lochs, Scotland, unlike Norway, does not have the topography in which hydroelectricity can be predominant. Norway is very much bigger and more mountainous; it also has a smaller population than Scotland.
Are the Scottish environmentalists proposing tidal turbines on the major river estuaries? You certainly can't dam the Tay. Where does this mysterious "hydro" come from?
Can someone please ask the green party why don't they campaign for an airport to be closed down. Why is it always power plants