Casting about for the least unpopular "solution" to the problem, politicians find a seductive answer: wind power. The wind power debate is full of cant which the bemused public cannot evaluate. Misrepresentation is inevitable where vested interests have so much to lose. Take away the enormous subsidies, and all the wind generation applications would disappear in a flash. If our politicians claim vision and courage, they should concentrate on strategies to generate real economic and environmental benefits and deliver long-term social advantages.

But what of wind's performance as an energy provider? Wind generation does not provide a reliable supply of power. It must be ‘shadowed' by baseload power stations such as nuclear and coal as it is intermittent. Over-reliance on it could lead to supply interruptions if the wind does not blow, blows too hard or does not blow where the wind farms are located. Importantly, such high-demand periods of cold and hot weather correspond to periods of low wind so overdependence on intermittent wind can actually increase carbon emissions as conventional power stations are required as back-up. Importantly wind farms perform well if their average output reaches as much as 35% of their generating capacity, but this rarely happens. Evidence shows that, throughout Europe, wind turbines have produced on average less than 20% of their capacity in recent years.

Your reporting of the Government's energy policy focuses on the supply problems that make the building of 7,000 wind turbines onshore and offshore by 2020 infeasible (News & Christopher Booker, June 29). But there is worse hidden in the 267-page consultation document. ...It is not until page 228 that the document says: "We will also need to consider the potential environmental impacts such as those on biodiversity, landscapes, air quality, soils and land as well as the marine environment." So much for our landscapes and historical assets.

Since Gordon Brown on Thursday launched what he called "the greatest revolution in our energy policy since the advent of nuclear power", centred on building thousands of new wind turbines, let us start with a simple fact. Nothing conveys the futility of wind power more vividly than this: that all the electricity generated by the 2,000 wind turbines already built in Britain is still less than that produced by a single medium-sized conventional power station. ...herein lies the central misconception which bedevils the entire debate. Because of the wind's intermittency, turbines generate on average at less than a third of their capacity. Thus to contribute 10GW would need 30GW of capacity, which would require up to twice as many turbines as ministers are talking about - needing to be erected at a rate of more than four every working day between now and 2020.

When politicians call for a "national debate", it is a sure sign that the most dubious policy is about to be railroaded through, whether we debate it or not. That is what lies at the heart of the Prime Minister Gordon Brown's portentous declaration yesterday of a "green revolution". Thousands of new wind turbines are set to be built across the UK over the coming decade as part of a GBP 100 billion plan for renewable energy. What a dissembling cheek the Prime Minister has in suggesting we hold a "national debate" on the wind-farm "revolution". The die is cast and the EU-imposed target of 15 per cent of renewable energy has long been set. Where was the "national debate" about that?

It is a question of nature versus need, and livelihood versus landscape. The Scottish Government's rejection this week of plans for Europe's largest wind farm on Barvas Moor, on Lewis, has shown there are many shades of green. Only a few years ago, the merits of the Lewis Wind Power (LWP) scheme were trumpeted high and wide. ...Since then, however, environmentalism has come in for increasing questioning and paradoxes have been revealed. The rejection of LWP - to protect the fragile ecosystem of the Lewis Peatlands Special Protection Area - may be a taste of things to come. ..."Given the 'green on green' nature of the debate, opinion will doubtless remain divided over whether such a development would be a good, bad or indifferent development in Scotland."

Without any public discussion Eamonn Ryan and the ESB unveiled plans to spend €22bn of our money on a madcap proposal which will seriously damage our ability to meet future energy needs. The plans include a massive increase in wind power which can never supply dependable power when needed. ...ESB Chief Padraic McManus said that he did not see nuclear power "being an issue" before 2035 thereby ending the nuclear debate promised by Minister Ryan, before it even started. So at a stroke this country has been effectively condemned to almost total dependence on imported fossil fuels for the foreseeable future.

Scottish & Southern Energy is advocating more hydro-electricity projects because wind farms need instant back-up when the wind abates (Scrutineer, 27 March). This is most interesting to those of us endowed with memory, for we've come around a full circle ...

Another area where the French have emphatically got it right is in power generation. After the oil shocks of 1973, France, with no significant oil or gas reserves of its own, embarked on a massive expansion of nuclear power, completely ignoring the doom-mongerers such as Greenpeace. The result has been an unqualified success story. Today, France has 59 nuclear power plants producing 78 per cent of its electricity needs. Electricity is so cheap and abundant that much of it is exported to the UK and Germany, earning the French economy about three billion euros a year. ...And because nuclear emits no carbon or pollutants, France is also one of the "greenest" countries in the industrialised world.

"Developers interested only in a quick buck are making different offers in different bits of the country, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are at the throats of councils, quangos at the throats of everybody, communities disquieted, and the national strategic interest forgotten about." The lack of leadership and the absence of a national energy plan had made some developers "unscrupulous", Smith claimed. "Irresponsible mischief" had been made by environmental groups and politicians, while Scottish Natural Heritage and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency had been "curiously inflexible" he said.

UK Energy Minister John Hutton in December set out a grandiose vision of how this vast potential resource would be tapped. ...In breaking down exactly what Hutton proposed, Britain has to achieve a 60-fold increase in wind power in just 12 years. So far, the UK government has poured US$1 billion into wind power and has yet to see it deliver even a half-percent of the country's electricity needs. ... Whether these resources are enough remains to be seen. With the current international drive for a dramatic slashing of greenhouse gas emissions, Hutton will have had no problem making his 2020 announcement. Only time will tell if it was more about generating headlines than electricity.

What other country has politicians so gullible that they end up making their electorate pay to produce energy needed in another country? What other country would set a renewable-energy obligation that taxes its consumers to produce 18 per cent of electricity to compensate for the failure of England to reach its 10 per cent obligation? ...If England needs Scottish wind to fulfil its renewable energy target, surely English consumers should pay Scottish wind energy producers.

Discussion of energy in Europe today tends to be dominated by what are described as environmental issues, chiefly the question of carbon emissions and global warming. So much so, in fact, that the rather more urgent matter of security of supply is all too often overlooked. But it is now becoming acute. ...the greater threat to Europe's energy supply lies at home, in the looming prospect of a growing gap between demand for electricity and the capacity of power stations to supply it. The problem is probably most acute in Germany, which is committed - on politically compelling but rationally inexplicable grounds - not only to building no more nuclear power stations, but to closing down those it already has.

Energy policy in Great Britain has been a shambles for years. Cowardly governments have turned a blind eye to repeated warnings over prices and supply. Disaster has been avoided thanks only to lucky escapes rather than good stewardship. A case study in the stupidity of the British government’s attitude to energy – aided and abetted by the European Union – is its continuing obsession with wind farms, a so-called sustainable source of energy which is costly, inefficient, unreliable – and ultimately unsustainable. The official line from London and Brussels has always been that wind turbines produce energy more cleanly and cheaply than any conventional alternatives ever could. ...The facts are clear: the United Kingdom’s 165 wind farms have failed to deliver on their promises: they are not significantly cleaner; they are certainly not cheaper; and they are already draining the pockets of the consumer, hitting the poor and needy hardest of all.

Few might guess, from the two-dimensional reporting of these plans in the media, just what a gamble with Europe's future we are undertaking - spending trillions of pounds for a highly dubious return, at a devastating cost to all our economies. The targets Britain will be legally committed to reach within 12 years fall under three main headings. Firstly, that 15 per cent of our energy should come from renewable sources such as wind (currently 1 per cent). Secondly, that 10 per cent of our transport fuel should be biofuels. Thirdly, that we accept a more draconian version of the "emissions trading scheme" that is already adding up to 12 per cent to our electricity bills. The most prominent proposal is that which will require Britain to build up to 20,000 more wind turbines, including the 7,000 offshore giants announced by the Government before Christmas. To build two turbines a day, nearly as high as the Eiffel Tower, is inconceivable. What is also never explained is their astronomic cost.

If you thought the 2008 presidential race was shattering all records for windy rhetoric, it's nothing compared to the political eco-rhetoric being spun to US taxpayers -- to get them to cough up billions of dollars to fuel a renewable wind power industry boom sensible investors won't touch with a turbine's rotor blade. ...Wind power sounds a great European success story -- one to be echoed in the US, it seems, as 2008 is set to see wind power developments shatter records for the fourth consecutive year. However, a closer look at the European "success" story reveals that all is not quite as it seems. Wind seems to be blowing in the mind of the politically correct and those on the recent environmentalist bandwagon but the cost is going to be huge, no companies will plunge into it without massive government subsidies and, if actually built, power reliability will take a nosedive. ...The bottom line is that the renewables debate, and investment in it, is as much about ideology and political belief as it is about economics and environmental issues. When the real cost of turbine power as a major player toward our future power needs is assessed, the answer just ain't "blowing in the wind".

Once we were offered an easy way to help save the planet: ask an electricity provider to supply you with power from renewable sources and you would reduce carbon emissions and so tackle climate change. But doing the right thing has turned out to be more complicated. There are growing concerns that 'green tariffs' reduce carbon emissions by far less than promised - a point accepted even by government. Supporters still argue they are worthwhile because they boost demand for renewable energy in future. But even that is now being questioned: demand is already massively outstripping supply, leading providers to turn away big customers. ...But, surveying 12 tariffs offered by nine companies in 2006, the National Consumer Council (NCC) found many were not delivering the environmental benefits they claimed. Worryingly, even the better tariffs 'only reduce CO2 emissions by around 100kg a year - just 6 per cent of the average household's CO2 emissions', the NCC said. Since then, Ofgem, the energy regulator, and the government's Energy Saving Trust have launched consultations into accreditation schemes to reassure customers. ...Meanwhile, many campaigners are reserving judgment - afraid to deter consumers from doing something to help, but worried that if green tariffs are seen as a sham there could be a backlash.

When the history of modern Britain comes to be written, one of the most catastrophic failures of successive governments will be seen to have been their grotesque mishandling of our national energy policy. ...around 2000, came two further twists to the tale. First it became clear to all the experts that, as North Sea gas ran out and the bulk of our most productive coal and nuclear power plants would reach the end of their lives after 2010, Britain would face a grave energy crisis. But also alarm over global warming had by now hit the top of the agenda. Politicians in London and Brussels had become hypnotised by Green fantasies about "carbon-free renewables" and shut their eyes to the real crisis that was now fast approaching. The nadir of this unreality was the 2003 Energy White Paper, which blethered on about wind turbines but made no attempt to address the gravity of Britain' s impending energy gap.

Yesterday's announcement that the Government has given the go-ahead to a new generation of nuclear power plants drew predictable howls of outrage from the green lobby. One minute they are complaining that the Government is not taking the threat of global warming seriously enough, the next they complain even louder when the Government takes the issue seriously and pledges to do something about it. There's just no pleasing some people. Let's make this absolutely plain for the seriously hard of thinking - nuclear power is the only proven and cost-effective way of producing the large amounts of electricity we need, without massively increasing carbon emissions.

Surprisingly, the Government has yet to respond. Dr Ion admits her frustration: “The science on climate change is clear but people have forgotten that engineers have to apply that science. It’s all very well to say that we’ll have 20 per cent of our energy coming from wind power by 2020, but that’s useless if nobody’s done any studies on how that’s going to be delivered. If people continue to set unrealisable targets, Government policy will begin to lose credibility.” I have an idea: a year ago the Environment Agency fined four British companies £750,000 for breaking EU rules on carbon emissions trading. You can see where I’m heading . . .