In reply to my previous letter about the inefficiency of wind farms, Paula Whitney defended her stance by arguing: “It is pretty obvious the wind doesn’t blow the turbines at 100 per cent all the time”

(Gazette, August 23).

Of course, no one would disagree with that, but the truth is the wind doesn’t blow the turbines at 100 per cent any of the time. But over-generous subsidies mean hundreds of turbines are being built on sites that are simply not breezy enough.

Paula says I do not realise that when calculating how much electricity will be produced from a wind farm, the variability of wind is taken into account. If that were true, many of those wind farms would not have been built.

Since £283,000 a year can be earned in subsidies for one turbine running at 30 per cent, it is often the huge profits that will be produced from building wind farms that dictates where they are built.

Does Paula not understand the electricity they produce, intermittently and unreliably, costs about four times as much as nuclear power?

Can she not see that until a means is found of storing the electricity they produce and releasing it on demand, wind power will remain a waste of money, and conventional power stations will still be needed to meet demand?

Inevitably, Paula introduces climate change into her argument. But we really must look closely at the facts. Britain accounts for only 1.84 per cent of total worldwide carbon dioxide emissions.

Therefore, even if we shut down the whole country’s industrial, commercial and domestic fossil-based energy consumption, the overall effect on the world’s carbon dioxide levels would be immeasurable.

Another fact we ignore at our peril is that wind farms are achieving an average efficiency of only 21 per cent, and we would need to build many thousands more wind farms in a much shorter time-scale than Paula suggests in order to meet future energy needs, which would just not be possible.

I’m afraid Paula has been seduced by the wind farm/climate change lobby.

She won’t like it, but the fact is if we do not embark immediately on a rapid construction programme of a reliable means of producing energy, and that includes nuclear, it will not be long before all the lights go out.

Ron Levy
All Saints Avenue
Colchester