WHEN I first read Mr Andrew Clements? letter ?Windfarms are vital to preserve our landscape?, March 3, I thought he had his tongue firmly in his cheek. A second reading made me realise that he was serious ? and wrong on every single point he made. First, one typical conventional power station (nuclear or fossil) would need to be replaced by aerogenerators (to use the correct title) covering some 100 square miles of our already over-pressed countryside; second, they can only be expected to provide their claimed output capacity for perhaps 80% of the time, so that stand-by generation (probably diesel-electric) must be permanently available to make good the shortfall. This cost should fall on the owner of the aerogenerator, but at present this is not a requirement. It will have to become one. The claims of efficiency and cheapness Mr Clements makes are simply wrong. Because of the unpredictable nature of the wind, it is virtually impossible to maintain the required voltage and frequency standard demanded by the public grid system. In times of high demand, this can lead to instability and ?brownouts? or indeed disconnections across large parts of the system. The Royal Academy of engineering reports that the real cost of on-shore windpower, including the necessary stand-by reserve, is 5.4p per kWh, compared with 2.2p for combined cycle gas turbine and 2.3p for nuclear (including decommissioning costs). Offshore windpower costs 7.2p. This introduction of instability in the public supply is the main reason that the Irish government has halted all further windpower planning consents. Finally, it is about time that the old greenhouse gas theory was finally put to sleep. Increasingly, independent scientists (not used by the green lobby or our government) are realising that such global warming as we are experiencing is due to cyclic changes in the emissions of the sun, as have occurred ever since the world was formed. Plans to stop such warming are useless. The Kyoto protocal on CO2 emissions is a monumental irrelevance. We need to understand the possible extent and effects of solar warming (in practice probably quite modest) and to plan accordingly, not pretend we can stop it. Geoffrey M Stowell The Down Bere Alston MR Clements would have us believe that windfarms are vital to preserve our landscape. There are a number of facts that Mr Clements fails ? doesn?t want? ? to understand. First, the contribution that on-shore wind-turbines can make to the country?s energy requirements is trivial. In Germany and Denmark wind power needs underpinning to the tune of 80% by other methods of electricity generation. The result is a cost to the taxpayer of £billions in Germany and electricity prices twice those of the UK in Denmark. Second, the recent report of the National Audit Office (NAO) and the German Government Energy Agency have criticised windfarms as being several times more costly than other available measures of reducing greenhouse gases. Third, increasing the proportion of wind generation will require large numbers of electricity pylons to be constructed. The NAO Report concludes that some £1.3-billion will be required for this purpose by 2010. This money will also have to be found by electricity consumers. Fourth, the reason companies are interested in constructing wind-turbines has nothing to do with global warming, self-sustaining electricity generation or any other ?green? issue. It is down to the bald fact that there is lots of money to be made thanks to the generous subsidies and cross-subsidies that the Government has introduced. Finally, the sources I have quoted in this letter are official ones. I place rather more faith in these than in a couple of web sites sponsored by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth! John K Welsby Higher Burston Farm Bow