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1 March, 2010
Regarding Ken Gear’s assertions of misleading spin (‘Misleading
spin’; SN 23/2.10), I beg to disagree.
First, the wave map in Professor Wallace’s presentation:
http://royalsociety.org/WorkArea/DownloadAsset.aspx?id=5456 does
not, to my eye, show Shetland to be any different from the western
seaboard of the British Isles, apart from the Irish Sea (the whole
of western Ireland is excluded). This is precisely what Billy Fox
pointed out.
Secondly, the carbon payback model is the one used by Viking Energy,
and its environmental statement also assumes a 100 per cent carbon
loss for worst case scenario (clearly ridiculous, but that’s how the
spreadsheet, recommended by the government, works). What several
organisations, and individuals, besides Sustainable Shetland, take
issue with are their assumptions about the effects of drainage on
peatland, and habitat restoration. To assume that habitat will be
fully restored in a worst case scenario is at best naïve, at worst
dishonest, but that is what Viking Energy does.
On a more general level, I’m afraid Ken Gear is falling into the
same trap as some other supporters of the wind and wave farms in
Shetland.
Three negative points about these renewable energy schemes are:
1) that they are intermittent, requiring substantial back-up from
fossil fuel and/or nuclear power generation;
2) they are miles and miles from the national grid, which lessens
their cost-effectiveness and energy efficiency; and
3) until we all, locally and nationally, realise that until we
change our ways, which for centuries have taken for granted that the
world is ours to plunder for economic growth, such schemes will only
feed further exploitation of resources and people, war, loss of
biodiversity, and climate change.
For too many years now Shetland Islands Council has been flying a
flag that proclaims: “Think locally, act globally”. This means that
local projects have to be big and shiny in global terms, and it
doesn’t matter how much money is spent on their promotion, never
mind any democratic and demonstrable opposition. I don’t know for
sure the reason for this, perhaps it’s just that we’ve never had it
so good and we are incapable of grasping that riches don’t last
forever. It’s becoming clear, however, that the emperor has no
clothes.
So please can we reverse the slogan to one that other – less
assuming - local authorities use: “Think globally, act locally”, and
that includes balancing economics with care for the environment, and
how best we sustain it for the future. Please remember, by the way,
that Viking Energy’s own projected employment figures for the wind
farm in its operational stage are a mere 20 local residents. That’s
not much for such a huge investment and widespread industrialisation
of the landscape.
We would also do well to address the issue of fuel poverty which is
at a high level in the northern isles, and will not be reduced -
rather the opposite - by industrial-scale wind or wave farms.
If we want some examples to follow, Orkney Islands Council has
received the Carbon Trust Standard for reducing its carbon footprint
by six per cent - and achieved considerable financial savings,
while, also in Orkney, a Wool Insulation Group has been set up to
look into the feasibility of using this local resource, much of
which is wasted, and the use of biomass for heating is being
researched at the Agronomy Institute. In Shetland, both Hjaltland
Housing Association and Shetland Heat Energy and Power are looking
into a mix of renewables for district heating schemes. (Heat, as
well as transport, account for by far the greatest consumption of
fossil fuels.)
We might even look into the Transition Towns initiative. But
whatever we do, as the president of the Royal Society of Chemistry
said in a talk given here last year on sustainable energy, we
urgently need to “think out of the box” – or, dare I say, the trap.
Perhaps, in conclusion, Mr Gear might reveal to us what he believes
are Sustainable Shetland’s “ill-shrouded real motives”?
Yours sincerely,
James Mackenzie
The Lea.
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