We write as senior academics at the University of Glasgow who actively research the decarbonisation of energy to deplore the decision of our university court to divest from fossil fuels (Report, 9 October). The court’s position is vacuous posturing, since alternatives to fossil fuels are not yet available at scale for heat and transport, or for electricity production on demand. Indeed, our university has just committed itself to a new gas-fired campus heating system, not least because the only current renewable alternative (biomass) had a far poorer environmental profile. The skills and facilities of the hydrocarbons sector – many of whom are our alumni – are indispensable to the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS), without which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change considers there is no chance of the world achieving emissions reduction targets. CCS also offers the only sizeable prospect for actively stripping greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
Moreover, most food consumed in Europe today relies on nitrogen produced from hydrocarbons and they are also the raw materials for the vast array of plastics our society demands – many of which can lock up fossil carbon for centuries. Again, no alternatives yet exist at scale. To pretend otherwise is intellectually dishonest.
We trust that those academic colleagues who voted for this gesture have had the moral consistency to turn off the heating in their offices (entirely fossil-fuelled) and to switch off their computers and room lights for the 34.5% of the working day that fossil fuels provide electricity in Scotland.
Professor Paul Younger Rankine chair of engineering and professor of energy engineering
Professor Colin McInnes James Watt chair and professor of engineering science
Professor Fin Stuart Professor of isotope geosciences
Professor Rob Ellam Director, Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre
Professor Adrian Boyce Professor of applied geology
University of Glasgow
