NOW that the election is over, hopefully the government will face the unpalatable truth about electricity generation in this country. Of course we would all like cleanly produced renewable electricity but the vast majority of electrical power in this country today is generated from two sources; fossil fuel generation and nuclear power. With the extent of our present knowledge we are quite incapable of producing any significant amount of electricity by other means. Wind power can, at best, only supply a tiny amount of our needs, be only intermittent and must always require a huge amount of standby backup in the form of fossil fuel power constantly running in the event of wind failure. The proposed new wind generators are not significantly better than they were 20 years ago. They are not in any way experimental and will not further our knowledge or understanding in any way at all. We simply do not have the geographical terrain for significant hydro electricity generation (although that which we do have is relatively harmless), tidal power is again intermittent and has a totally unacceptable impact on our estuaries and wave power remains very much in its infancy and would, in any case, be hideously expensive. The biggest danger of wind farms or any of these so called solutions is that they lull us into a sense of false security that we are ?solving the problems of energy generation and the dangers of global warming?. This is simply not the case. What this new wind factory will do is much harm to our beloved countryside. We need desperately to find a way of generating large mounts of electricity economically and safely and minimising carbon dioxide emission. Wind factories have lulled many into a false sense of security. This is their greatest danger. Even though they are virtually useless we are forced into constructing them because we have nothing else. Nuclear power does not produce any significant carbon dioxide and does not, therefore, contribute to global warming, but there remains the question of safety and the disposal of nuclear waste, although a number of other countries seem to have arrived at a satisfactory solution to the second of these two problems. Nuclear power can never provide a solution on its own. The power generation is too inflexible for more than 60% of our requirements. Fossil fuels (gas, coal, oil) do produce large amounts of carbon dioxide but a possible solution may be to dispose of it in exhausted oil wells where recent research has indicated that it could be safely stored for millions of years. We should be concentrating on perfecting solutions to these two problems if we are to solve our energy problems in the medium-term. Given that we have to use both of these methods and that there is simply no realistic alternative let us do it as safely and carefully as we can. We need to do a great deal more research. To pretend that wind generators or any current renewable energy generation will have any significant impact on our power requirements is disingenuous in the extreme and is an act of dishonesty by certain fringe political parties who really should know better. Yes, let us continue to experiment and research and all work together to find better ways of generating a significant amount of electricity cleanly, safely and if at all possible by renewable means because we certainly haven?t found it yet! Richard Leonard Menfreya Thorndon Cross