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Daily Telegraph    13 July 2005


Wind power will have no effect on climate change

SIR - Jonathon Porritt, the chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission, has said that "climate change will have a devastating impact unless urgent action is taken to boost the contribution of renewables... We believe wind power is a critically important part of the overall energy mix."

He is selling a delusion. The Government's target figure for Britain's 2010 saving in carbon dioxide emission by means of all renewable electricity generation in Britain is 9.2 megatonnes of carbon dioxide per year.

This amount is less than four ten-thousandths of the global carbon dioxide emission of nearly 25,000 megatonnes per year recorded by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

It stands no chance of altering atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration by a measurable amount, and will not divert climatic change.

Professor David Bellamy, Conservation Foundation London SW7
Dr John Etherington,

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SIR - Tidal barrages do offer the potential for greener energy (Letters, July 11). Regrettably, once the French had actually built one across the Rance near St Malo they never bothered to build any more.

We all know that things ought to be the way forward, but the science and engineering keep interfering. Instead the French built more nuclear power stations. Perhaps they were right. They sometimes are.

Philip Saunders, Bungay, Suffolk