With reference to the two recent articles on climate change (The Argus, February 21 and 22), the Prime Minister is reported as having said that we must make massive reductions in carbon emissions. If we don't the sea will seriously menace Brighton and Hove, as well as other places.

What he did not say was that the EU has given him an ultimatum that 15 per cent of power generation must come from renewables by 2020 or this country will face hefty fines. He has no option but to comply because the Government has given up the right to object to such rulings.

To reduce existing power station capacity and attempt to replace it with wind power is simply madness.

Wind generators provide an average of only 25 per cent of their rated output because if there is no wind there is no power, and if there is too much wind they must be shut down.

To replace the output of our existing gas and coal-fired power stations, now reduced by 15 per cent, thousands of wind generators would be required to be built. We are already paying through our electricity bills for those now in use, which are responsible for less than one per cent of total British output.

Imagine an anticyclone over Britain in winter, with snow and frost - a situation calling for maximum output, but it can't be supplied because there is no wind in these conditions. To build new nuclearpowered generating stations would be the sensible answer, but the EU does not accept this method as falling into the renewables category, neither will the Government, perversely, agree to subsidise them.

With recent steep increases in oil and gas prices, nuclear is now competitive.

The canny French already generate 80 per cent of their needs in this way.

Britain's contribution to carbon emissions worldwide is a mere two per cent. Even if we shut down all our use of energy, the difference in emissions would rapidly be taken up by the new power stations being built in India, China and elsewhere.

How on earth is the reduction of our emissions by 15 per cent of two per cent going to affect the global position?

  • RFJ Turtle, Hawkins Close, Shoreham