Letters: Let’s get fracking

Get fracking

Sir: All credit to The Spectator for grabbing the cancelled Tory leadership debate slot (‘The final three’, 23 July) and for quizzing the contenders on the massive cost of net zero. Rishi Sunak’s response was particularly disappointing. Here is a man who has financial acumen and who has spent his entire cabinet career in the Treasury. Yet he would have us believe that the offshore wind industry, whose biggest costs are incurred in erecting huge structures of steel, iron, plastic/resin and concrete, has somehow contrived to cut those costs by nearly three-quarters over a decade. Unfortunately strike prices around £40/MWh which have been obtained for some recent offshore wind projects are not a binding commitment on the successful bidders to deliver energy at that price. If Sunak does believe that offshore wind-turbine costs have been transformed, it raises the question of why, as chancellor, he did nothing to reduce the subsidies the industry extracts from consumers.