LETTER submitted to pioneer, sEPTEMBER 2008

LETTER FOR PUBLICATION

Dear Editor,

MORE MYTHS ABOUT ENERGY

I would like to correct some of the many inaccuracies in Mr Lawson-Reay's letter of the 3rd of September.

1 With regard to Mr Lawson-Reay's suggestion that wind power is "unreliable", all sources of power are intermittent, including coal-fired and nuclear power stations which need to be shut down from time to time for routine maintenance or because of unanticipate failures. And we should not forget that the demand for electricity fluctuates wildly, often from minute to minute.

It is widely recognised that the transmission grid will accommodate up to 20% of wind power without the need for any special provision. But much higher proportions of wind power can be accommodated by the use of a range of load-balancing techniques. Probably the most important of these is the creation of a large-scale transmission grid spanning the whole of Europe, an idea that has now been endorsed by EU Energy Commissioner Andris Piebalgs. A large-scale grid like that can largely eliminate the intermittency of wind power (and other sources of power): the wind may stop blowing in any one spot but it is remarkably constant across a wide area like Europe.

2 Mr Lawson-Reay says "America has 10,000 turbines installed but the output from all of them only equals that of one conventional coal-fired power station". The American Wind Energy Association says "The U.S. wind power fleet now numbers 16,818 MW and spans 34 states. American wind farms will generate an estimated 48 billion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of wind energy in 2008, just over 1% of U.S. electricity supply, powering the equivalent of over 4.5 million homes."

3 Mr Lawson-Reay says that nuclear waste "loses 99.9% of its radioactivity within six months". But in a report published in 2002, the Government's Department of Trade and Industry (as it then was) said "All radioactivity decays over time but some types of radioactive waste remain hazardous for thousands of years".

Many readers will remember that in November 2006 the Advertising Standards Authority upheld all six complaints made against the SOS group and their campaign opposing the proposed Gwynt y Môr wind farm in Liverpool Bay. At the time, Mr Lawson-Reay declared that SOS, which he represents, would ignore the ASA ruling, thus signalling his intention to carry on deceiving the public. On the evidence of the inaccuracies in his recent letter, Mr Lawson-Reay is remaining true to that intention.

Sincerely,

Dr Gerry Wolff PhD CEng

Coordinator of TREC-UK

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