I thank Andrew Halcrow for the courtesy of replying to my letter, and also thank him for his kind words in respect to my tenure as an SIC councillor and Shetland Charitable Trust trustee.

Andrew has had the good grace to admit that Sustainable Shetland does not have a viable project plan to maintain the Shetland electricity grid, post oil, and therein lies its dilemma. It seems to support smaller individual or community enterprises supplying only Shetland’s electricity needs despite the inherent difficulties, if not impossibility, of balancing such a grid.

The NINES project will allow around 30 per cent …

I am writing to you on behalf of Sustainable Shetland regarding Shetland Charitable Trust. We were concerned by the gravity of the situation which prompted OSCR to intervene to prohibit trustees convening a meeting at short notice for the purpose of deciding whether to commit £6.3 million of charitable trust funds to the Viking Energy project.

In the light of this intervention, we have written to OSCR for clarification on the current position and would ask you to consider the following points before taking further action in this matter.

1) Regarding the proposed meeting on 30th April OSCR stated that …

I agree with James Sandison that there are no easy options regarding energy production – and I sympathise with Peter Dixon’s pronouncements (comments) on “unlimited” economic growth.

I take heart, however, from what Søren Harmensen of the Danish island of Samsø said in 2010 at an enlightening meeting about renewable energy, held in Scalloway (and I paraphrase):

1. “Think local, act local.”

2. “Don’t get into bed with big (energy) companies.”

So to Mr Sandison I would say, regarding biomass: in Shetland a regrettably tiny percentage of agricultural land is now used for human food production.

There are actually moves …

In light of the furore about the windfarm, I thought it worthwhile to consider all generation technology, to see how they compare with one another, and what options there are. This is a brief overview; to give detailed coverage would take an encyclopaedia.

Hydrocarbons
The continued use of coal, oil and gas are well documented. Assertions about hydrocarbon fuel stretching into the distant future are not entirely correct. Oil has a very limited affordable lifespan of only a few decades. There is a lot of shale gas being found and exploited, and it will last longer than oil. However it …

I apologise to Tony Erwood for using the words wind turbine technology. I should have said wind power technology.

Geordie Pottinger says that “as appointed trustees of Shetland Charitable Trust (SCT) it behoves them, legally, to take investment decisions in order to make the best returns possible while, at the same time, protecting the trusts’ funds”. This is a project with a projected profit, which is entirely speculative, and there are absolutely no guarantees, even at this stage, that it will pay for itself.

I think the “spectacular returns” Geordie speaks of are those quoted in a report by Quayle Munro. This is a report which has not been made available for scrutiny to the public, who will be …

In relation to the cancelled SCT meeting of 30th April, Ann Black, chief executive of Shetland Charitable Trust, states in her press release: “I appreciate trustees’ frustration at not being able to debate or discuss this matter.”

As far as I can ascertain, there was nothing in the OSCR directive preventing them from doing so. Trustees were free to discuss or debate “this matter” (further funds for VE) to their hearts’ content, from the date and time of the meeting until 12pm on 2nd May, to be precise. This begs the question if trustees were correctly advised by SCT officials. …

There’s a lot of discussion presently about the 2km distance of wind turbines from dwellings.

Investment decisions by the Shetland Charitable Trust (SCT), as presently constituted, lie with the newly elected councillors for Shetland Island Council (SIC) as SCT trustees, ex-officio.

Newly elected SIC councillors can vote whichever way they please on any subject, commensurate with their own ideas and political opinions, irrespective of their intrinsic merit.

However, they do not enjoy the same freedom of decision while acting as SCT trustees.

As appointed trustees of Shetland Charitable Trust it behoves them, legally, to take investment decisions in order to make the best returns possible while, at the same time, protecting the trusts’ funds. This, …

As soon as I learned of the Shetland Charitable Trust meeting arranged for Monday 30th April, I contacted my SIC representatives Florence Grains, Frank Robertson and Gary Robinson, who are also SCT trustees, to ascertain their opinion.

None of them knew anything about it. This not only shows a singular lack of respect, decency and consideration towards these three trustees, and possibly others, but also clearly illustrates the moral void those trustees, desperate to hand over a few more of our millions to their pet project, now find themselves in. We live in sad times.

Rosa Steppanova
The Lea,
Tresta.…