NEW wind farm applications in East Yorkshire and across the rest of the county will quadruple over the coming months as the Government seeks to erect up to 7,000 more wind turbines to meet its binding EU target of 15 per cent of all energy to come from renewable sources by 2020 (Yorkshire Post, July 15).

The bulk of this renewable drive will have to come from wind. However, wind's contribution to our electricity needs will be negligible and costly.

New clean coal power stations, which can be built relatively quickly, with the ability to retrofit carbon capture and storage technology when it is ready, should now be encouraged and supported, alongside nuclear, to help plug the expected 2015 energy gap and lessen our increasing dependence on gas for electricity generation and an over-dependence on unreliable and costly renewables such as wind, which is not a baseload supplier of electricity. At times of high energy demand, such as during hot and cold periods, there is often very little wind.

The new Centre for Policy Studies report, Wind Chill: why wind energy will not fill the UK's energy gap, shows that meeting the target of 15 per cent of energy from renewable sources will cost hard-pressed British households £100bn. This is the equivalent of £4,000 for every household in the country. Wind Chill also documents the deep MoD air defence radar concerns and the RAF's pilot safety worries.

Wind farms are subsidised through the Renewables Obligation (RO) which is when money is taken from consumers' electricity bills and given to the renewable companies.

Wind's supporters claim there is no subsidy for wind energy but just because this money does not go through the Treasury books does not
negate the fact that it is a
huge subsidy tool.

Increases in the RO will mean higher electricity bills, which are already set to spike this winter, and consequently result in more families being plunged into fuel poverty, which is expected to reach
six million households by Christmas, a quarter of the total.

There is, of course, a political dimension to this debate as well as an economic one. A poll carried out to coincide with the publication of Wind Chill showed that 61 per cent of people were either very or fairly unwilling to pay electricity bills if the extra money funded renewable power sources such as wind.

From: Nigel Bywater, Airedale Terrace, Morley.

THE letter from M Dobson (Yorkshire Post, July 2) implies that wind power is new and a blot on the eye-line of the countryside. Wind mills have been milling flour for hundreds of years. It is only this daft aesthetic viewpoint that wind turbines are not "beautiful".

The crazy logic that he would prefer a nuclear power station to wind
turbines is illogical. People get wind turbines because
they are good for the environment and they save them money.

All the measures that people should take to help the environment are, in fact, a good thing for people's wallets and their health.

And there is a solution to off-peak wind power, the wind generated at peak times can be stored as compressed air or in a mainspring similar, but larger, to the ones that keep watches ticking all day long. But until there are enough wind turbines, these technologies will not
be needed.


Language that speaks of a better world

From: Bill Chapman, Vardre View, Deganwy, Conwy.

SARAH Freeman's article about Esperanto
was not unfair, but incomplete (Yorkshire Post, July 15).

I have used this language for over 40 years, and it has certainly enriched my life. I have used it during work-related visits to a dozen countries as well as on holidays.

Last year, for example, I was given a guided tour of Milan by a local Esperanto-speaking lady, a tour of Berlin by a local man, and
visited an Esperanto-speaking family near Strasbourg. It is the personal contacts it can give you in Sofia, Hamburg, Toulouse and so on which keeps speakers in the Esperanto-speaking community.

There are all sorts of specialist publications in the language, too, such as Scienca Revuo, whose title probably needs no translation.

The Esperanto movement generally does not ask for or receive state subsidies. It is a unique network of ordinary people who believe that a better world is possible and have taken steps to bring that about.