Readers’ Letters: Investment is insanity

One definition of insanity is doing something that doesn’t work, and then doing the same thing over and over, hoping that it will eventually work.

An example of this app-roach might be seen in our government’s decision, once again, to grant billions of pounds to subsidise the wood-burning power station at Drax in North Yorkshire.

The government claims that Drax is producing ‘sustainable clean energy’, but the UN IPCC says that for each unit of energy produced, wood-burning emits more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than burning the coal that Drax used to use.

What makes this more insane is the fact that Drax is located on top of a coal field!

It seems they are allowed to continue to pursue this because the carbon emissions from Drax are not counted as ‘UK emissions’ because the trees are imported from the USA and Canada, and they will eventually be replaced by new trees that will have grown there after 60 or 70 years.

To make this even more insane, the price to be paid to Drax, now, is more than the Treasury’s estimate of the future cost of that energy!

We are assured by our Energy Secretary that he is racing to produce clean home-grown energy but, if the country’s overriding objective is economic growth, is it not time for him to reconsider his illogical policies which seem only to be focused on emissions reduction?

I need to ask myself: “Is it me or is it him?” — R. SHEPPARD, Beckingham.