DURING the election it was surprising that the subsidy costs of renewable energy did not feature in the debate, although one area now under discussion is protection for wild places from the spread of industrial wind turbines. However, the question that has not been answered by our MSPs is why does Scotland require more wind turbines when there is already12,000 MW of installed generation plant for a population that only requires 5,000MW to meet maximum winter demand ?

The 630MW Wind Turbine Array in the Thames estuary was built for £1,800 million, or £3m per installed MW. On that cost basis 7,000MW of over-capacity on the Scottish Grid network means that there is £20 billion of plant that simply accrues Constraint Payments without delivering any economic advantage for the Scottish economy and merely adds to the financial household costs on the 40 per cent of Scots living in fuel poverty.

£20 billion could have provided much-needed resource for the NHS, education and social welfare. Why build 22 turbines at Altnahara when the money could be diverted to a new computer system for Police Scotland?

Ian Moir,

79 Queen Street, Castle Douglas.