South Gloucestershire | Archive | 2006 | February | 10
From the archive, first published Friday 10th Feb 2006.
STEVE Webb's recent survey (Gazette, Feb 3) is very laudable but only goes to show that many people do not understand the real issues about renewable energy. In an ideal world we would all love most of our energy to be produced by renewable resources, however, given current technology this is just not possible and the sooner we face the facts the better.
Renewables have an important part to play but we must understand that wind turbines will only play a very minor role. This is due to the fact that they only produce useful energy for 25 to 30 percent of the time and therefore a large amount of generating capacity has to remain on standby which means gas fired and nuclear power stations.
Even if the whole of the UK were turned into one big wind farm the contribution would be minimal in real terms. We need to look at tidal turbines and solar energy both. Even in the UK there are much more constant and reliable options which are in development but are still some years away. However, with more investment timescales could be easily reduced.
We also need to reduce demand for carbon energy, don't leave stuff on standby, turn off the lights. Very few people need to drive a 4x4 or heavy prestige car. Don't believe the brand hype you can still pretend to be an intrepid explorer or captain of industry just drive something fancy but smaller.
Dave Carpenter Camp road Oldbury-on-Severn
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