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Where indeed is the money to come from? I don't know what the life of a wind turbine will be, but I strongly suspect that by the time the target production figure is reached, the earlier ones built will already be obsolete and thus the final ongoing costs will be doubling. Likewise I do not know who the main consumer of electricity is, but the domestic consumer I have no doubt will in the main be unable to meet the cost of power produced from renewable sources unless there is a dramatic rise in their incomes over the next few years. This I fear is unlikely considering the size of the debt the last government left the taxpayer to pay off, something which could take twenty to thirty years of good housekeeping to achieve. What sadly is overlooked in this pie in the sky search for green energy is the plight of the domestic consumer, who at the end of the day should be what government is serving. At the moment government appears to be obsessed with serving the green lobby and to hell with the taxpayer. Priority must be changed from the clean and green , to cheap and affordable for those who have to foot the bill, even if this means telling the EU to stick it's emission targets where the squirrel stuck it's nuts. Scotland is sitting on a mountain of coal, it is relatively cheap to import, and is more productive than anything the renewable industry can ever come up with. Likewise nuclear power is efficient and in the long run will be cheaper than wind or water powered devices which at best are expensive and unreliable.

I think you need to check your figures, do you mean total capacity of 2.4GW, here?
"18 April, there were 1,367 turbines in 117 onshore wind projects in Scotland, with a capacity of 2.4MW"

Having coined the phrase "Cloud cuckoo land" on Â鶹Éç Good Morning Scotland last week, I should explain that while Scotland has a great opportunity to create many excellent jobs from the energy sector in the coming decades, we will not achieve 100% of our electricity from renewables by 2020 because there are too many obstacles, technical, financial,planning, infrastructure/distribution etc etc to be overcome in such a relatively short timescale to achieve such a target.
Scotland requires a balanced, sustainable, affordable secure energy supply and we should be making full use of all currently available energy technologies including wind (onshore and offshore)clean coal, biomass, hydro and nuclear.
A dependable baseload will be vital if we are to ensure that we have a secure supply going forward.
With our substantial coal reserves, it would be daft to leave it in the ground and with our experience of nuclear it ould be equally daft to refuse to make use of it.
Meantime, we have a number of excellent universities and first class companies working hard on taking forward our renewables technology.
Let's give them the support they need and deserve to ensure they succeed and in so doing help to boost our Scottish economy.

I think the time is overdue to focus our attention on the real discussion point here. I say that because I think four things are already clear:
(1) the growing need to significantly increase the extent to which our power is generated from renewable sources;
(2) the need to do so over time, via a balanced mix of generation sources and maintain our energy security;
(3) that Scotland has a wealth of renewable energy resource;
(4) we have chosen to focus the majority of our efforts around wind generation.

We can argue if these are based on right or wrong decisions, the way in which these are being acting upon, the prioritisations or the timescales; but I don’t think we can argue the validity.

However, when we take all of these into account, the extent to which we will need to manage intermittency in our energy supply is clear.

Generally, there are only 2 options being discussed, i.e. ensure sufficient predictable generation (nuclear, hydrocarbon, etc.) and/or provide sufficient network infrastructure to import/export power as needed (and hope that it’s economically viable to do so!)

In terms of the latter, the timescales talked about for the European SUPERGRID are between 2030 and 2050 (assuming European economies allow, which is a big assumption). In terms of the former, it has to be questioned if we can do this effectively without producing even more emissions than we would without considering renewables at all – and I think that is the real point.

However, there is a very critical ingredient that is mentioned for time to time (e.g. /news/uk-scotland-13253876%29 but never really focused on i.e. "we need greater electrical energy storage facilities"! Scotland will not be the last country to recognise how critical this is to the viability of renewables and, as such, it represents a fantastic opportunity to develop world-leading expertise in this area.

We have already missed the opportunity around most of the renewable generation devices we are deploying (although, with Aquamarine and Pelamis leading the way, I am still hopeful around wave power) – let’s not miss the opportunity around energy storage.

No nuclear power is required in Scotland . (I reckon if westMonster try to force nuclear on Scotland it WILL drive many towards voting for independence.) Not when we can develop the forth for coal gasification, and carbon capture for coal burning. Wind farms Douglas, (on shore anyway) are a 25 year stop gap until off shore wind and tidal, the real big bonanza is fully operational. All this article is Douglas is a typical veiled attack on the SNP.

P.S. 5000 years ago a tsunami struck the east Coast of Scotland after a under sea mudslide off the coast of Norway. That could happen again at any time. So never be complacent about such things.

As an Englishman I vote to give Scotland independence immediately. Before all these daft schemes come to fruition.

Douglas should read this because it's written by someone that actually knows what he's talking about.

Ok to all those who can’t count, a quick history lesson first, less than a month ago a number of wind farms in Scotland had to shut down because the grid was overloaded with too much generation and reduced consumption.
At this point in time 3/5/2011 at 16:35 Scotland is supplying the South with 1291 Mw
Which are more than the two atomic plants can produce never mind producing?

8. Great to know we're supplying all that power to the " south '. Why ? When the power companies are ripping off the punters up here , they should be making it cheaper for us, not flogging it to the highest bidder. I suppose it's because none of it actually ever belonged to Scotland.

Talking about energy storage: "UK scientists invent artificial petrol"



Pretty soon our problems will be over re' energy .. well maybe