South East

Energy expert Professor Ian Fells writes...

There is no doubt that the planet's climate is changing and Governments are under enormous pressure to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.

So they've come up with what they say is a brilliant idea. Let's generate lots of clean electricity… with wind farms!

Over the next 10 years we're going to lose a third of our conventional power stations as they reach the end of their working lives.

And we're not building enough new power stations to replace them. Instead, wind turbines are sprouting up all over the place.

And there are plans to build lots more which, to many people seems, like a great idea.

Throwing money to the wind

But I think we're throwing far too much money into wind and not enough into other forms of renewable energy.

Each turbine in an offshore wind farm is the size of the London Eye. At the wind farm off the Whitstable coastline in Kent, there are 30 turbines.

To replace a nuclear power station with wind generators, we would need another 2,000.

Future power? Whitstable wind farm.

And that's my first problem with wind power. Would we really want 2,000 turbines here? Even if it didn't scare away all the tourists and wildlife, it would cost billions.

And who ends up paying for it all? Well, ultimately, it's you and me of course - the customers.

Electricity generated from wind power costs about twice as much as that generated from nuclear power or coal power.

It's a myth that renewable energy is cheap. And of all the renewables you don't get much more expensive than wind….

And when it comes to something as fundamental as electricity, price cannot be ignored.

We need to start getting realistic about this. Wind power isn't going to give us cheap electricity.

Investing in energy

Over the next 10 years the Government wants more than £100bn invested in offshore wind. The target is 10,000 wind-turbines by 2020.

Even the electricity companies admit that these targets are, to put it mildly, ambitious.

If we could rely on wind to blow all the time, I'm sure the cost would come down. But we can't rely on it. And that's the second big problem with wind power.

Old style power station

It's great to have the wind in your sails when you're sailing your yacht. But if the wind fails then you have to have 100% backup with a diesel engine.

It's the same for wind turbines. When the wind blows at the right speed you've got power. When it doesn't, you haven't.

So how do we get our electricity in the depths of winter, when we're all freezing cold and the wind isn't blowing?

The key time of course is winter peak demand and winter peak demand typically occurs on an evening some time between January and February, a cold winter's day.

So, when you build wind turbines you also need to build back-up power stations for when the wind doesn't blow.

It's a bit like buying a car and towing another one behind it all the time, just in case…

Engineering wonders?

Now it's easy to criticise in a grumpy old man kind of way. So let's be positive for a moment.

I actually admire these structures and the people who built them. The engineering is extreme and very clever. And I'm not averse to using wind to make some electricity.

On a small scale, it works very well.

We can't control the wind. So if we're really serious about generating lots of clean electricity we need to adjust our sails and set our energy policy on a new course.

Shape of things to come?

What we should be doing is investing in more predicable forms of renewable energy.

And in nature the rise and fall of the tide is about the most predictable thing you can find.

Harnessing the energy in tidal rivers like the Thames would generate vast amounts of electricity every day, whatever the weather.

In the South East we could build underwater turbines out at sea and across our tidal rivers.

The water would flow through the turbines, turn a generator and produce electricity. Imagine if we had a barrage on the Medway instead of an oil-fired power station?

Tidal power! That's what our energy policy should be focused on.

Tidal power

If we don't turn tidal power into a reality, we're going to be in trouble. And wind won't get us out of it.

These turbines may make us feel that we're doing something to reduce our carbon footprint but I think they're lulling us into a false sense of security.

So it's a crisis situation. But the Government seems to have absolute faith in wind.

Despite the huge cost, at best they have a working life of just 25 years.

The trouble with our energy policy is that we put most of our renewable eggs into the wind farm basket.

We should be investing much more in marine technology, in tidal energy.

But time is running out and we need to get on with it now.