I THINK that ‘Action on Climate Emergency Settle and area’ are doing fantastic work.

ACE will be pleased I hope that the Policy committee of Craven District Council has recently and unanimously voted to support the Local Electricity Bill that is moving through parliament, sadly without our MP Julian Smith’s backing, yet.

I must however take issue with Sandy Tod on one issue regarding energy demand and use, for example, ‘balancing input from…nuclear and gas turbines’.

The Green Party have been arguing for many years in recognition of the work by Friends of the Earth, the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) in Wales and many others, that we do not need ‘further expansion of nuclear and gas turbines’ but to be far more clever about our energy use, easy to do now that renewables are cheaper than nuclear and new gas.

CAT has been at the forefront of development of research on renewable technology and Green building for some 50 years.

Their latest report ‘Zero Carbon Britain (Rising to the Climate Emergency)’ clearly demonstrates that the UK has the tools and technology to efficiently power this country with 100 per cent renewable technology (read the executive summary, it’s only eight pages long).

By using energy more efficiently we can power down by 60 per cent with particularly large savings in heating buildings and transport.

There is absolutely no need for nuclear power in our energy mix and we cannot afford it, let alone pay for cleaning up the sites at the end which taxpayers always end up paying for.

Nuclear now costs twice the price of renewables and the gap is growing.

How many Herald readers know that the electricity from the Hinkley Point nuclear reactor will cost UK consumers £92.50 per Kwh (the most recent offshore wind turbine fields are half of this)?

The deal was signed by (former Prime Minister) Theresa May and supported by Labour and Lib Dems.

The profits are going to the Chinese government which will run it for 40 years.

The French firm (EDF) that has been building Hinkley Point and wants to build more nuclear reactors in the UK wants to cushion the financial blow of future nuclear power stations in this country by charging electricity customers a few extra pounds every month on their bill even now.

This is referred to as a new funding model, I’d call it a rip-off. Are people really happy to put billions of pounds into the coffers of the Chinese government and EDF rather than invest, as part of a Green New Deal, in insulation and draught-proofing of UK homes to keep us warmer, take over two and a half million households out of fuel poverty and permanently reduce everyone’s fuel bills.

Cllr David Noland

Skipton North