Booker: Alex Salmond's green dream

10/08/2014

I have put the whole column up on the pic above (click to enlarge to readable size), but – as per a sort of developing tradition – I will only reproduce the lead story (although I suspect I might have a go at the Ukraine story later).

As to the lead, this is about Salmond and his wind farms, which has Booker telling us of the real reason why Alex Salmond's case for Scottish independence unravelled so badly in the face of dogged prodding by Alistair Darling during Tuesday's TV debate.

Writes Booker, that "real reason" was that it again exposed just how far the Great Bullfrog of Scottish politics has always been from producing a properly worked-out plan for how Scotland could disengage from the United Kingdom. It is, he says, as far away, alas, as UKIP has been from coming up with a practical plan for how the UK could leave the EU (let alone the ill-informed twaddle talked on that subject last week by Boris Johnson).

Indeed, on the point on which Mr Salmond was made to look so uncomfortable – his insistence that an independent Scotland could continue using the pound – his wishful thinking is even more adrift from reality than Tuesday's debate exposed.

Not only would an independent Scotland have to apply for separate membership of the EU (which, because of the precedent this would set for Spain and a potentially breakaway Catalonia, Brussels would not be keen to accept) but, like any other new applicant to join the EU, it would have to commit to joining the euro.

The truth is that almost every detail of Mr Salmond's fantasy construct raises practical problems that he has never really faced up to. Another which has scarcely been addressed – except in this column two years ago – is the implication of his reckless pledge that, within a decade or so, his country will be 100 per cent reliant on electricity generated from "renewables".

Scotland already contributes two thirds of all the UK's wind energy, thanks in large part to the First Minister’s drive to cover hundreds of square miles of that beautiful country with wind farms. On paper, their "capacity" of 4.6 gigawatts (GW) precisely matches Scotland’s average energy demand.

But, as we know, wind is so unreliable that the actual output of those 2,000-odd wind turbines is very much less – so embarrassingly small, in fact, that official websites seem to do their best to conceal the actual figure. In a page on the Scottish Renewables site entitled "Scotland's Renewable Sector in Numbers", the one thing not shown is the relevant numbers.

However, thanks to guidance from Dr John Constable and the website of his Renewable Energy Foundation, we can establish the actual output of Scotland’s turbines for the latest month for which figures are available: December 2013. The total of just over 1GW was only 24 percent of their "capacity".

Not only does this meet less than a quarter of Scotland's needs, it is also well under half of the 2.4GW that can be supplied at any time by Scotland's sole remaining large coal-fired power station – which Mr Salmond, lost in his green dreams, would like to see closed.

In his obsession with making Scotland 100 per cent reliant on grotesquely subsidised renewables, Mr Salmond may manage to cover even more of his country with wind farms.

But this will only mean that, to keep Scotland's lights on when the wind is not blowing, he will have to import ever more electricity from England. Already, we have all paid more than £2 billion for two giant interconnector cables running down the east and west coasts, to allow electricity to flow both ways between Scotland and England.

This will create an absurd situation under which, when Mr Salmond's wind turbines are all operating at full blast, the English will have to pay double or treble the price for the surplus they have subsidised to be exported south of the border – but when the wind in Scotland drops, the Scots will import the much cheaper current they need from fossil-fuel power stations in England.

Already, the subsidies we pay for Scotland's wind energy amount to £431 million a year. If Mr Salmond manages to build all those additional wind farms he dreams of, this could, before long, rise to billions a year.

Thanks to the interdependence of the grid, the English will still be paying for that – whether or not, as seems likely, the Great Bullfrog's make-believe dream of an independent Scotland finally crashes to earth next month.

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