How interesting to learn that Peterhead is now the only power station in the running for the Westminster money on offer for carbon capture.

We could have been at this point a few years ago, when this was a new technology devised in Aberdeen, no other country had developed it and Scotland could have been a world leader, able to sell the techniques and skills around the globe, if Westminster had backed the pilot proposed for Peterhead in cooperation with Shell, using its redundant oil facilities.

But Westminster refused to back this for the most specious of excuses. Would Scotland becoming a world leader in something with such potential not have benefitted the Scottish economy and thereby the UK as well?

But then Westminster backing waited for other UK power sources to enter the competition, while other countries, as usual, stole a march on us by taking the technology forward so that we lost our pre-eminent position in the marketplace. So now we have only Peterhead able to take this project forward. How ironic; back to square one. One has to suspect that this was a deliberate attempt to prevent too much benefit to the Scottish economy, which might have been a boost in the independence debate.

Let us also consider the anomaly, or sheer hypocrisy, of Westminster maintaining that the high cost of connecting renewables to the national grid from Scotland is intended to encourage production of renewable energy as close to the point of use as possible, while it cuts the incentives to local schemes and even to the likes of solar panels on the property that uses the power – and now intends imposing carbon taxes on such schemes that produce no carbon.

P Davidson,

22 Gartcows Road,

Falkirk.