IT IS healthy to see our fellow readers recognising the future energy gap (‘Wind won’t fill gap’ Letters October 31),) but the topic deserves greater objectivity.

Denouncing ‘green subsidies’ whilst defending nuclear subsidies requires us to know the numbers. Here they are: The UK “nuclear levy” (subsidy) was introduced in 1990 to cover the true cost of cleaning up the industry (£72 billion and rising).

This added 11% to our electricity bills. By comparison the ‘Renewables Obligations’ (RO) system (Carbon Taxation) makes us pay the true cost of fossil fuels.

The total cost of the RO is expected to equal around £1bn per annum by 2010, equal to an increase of 5.7% in customers’ bills, ie, half the Nuclear levy.

The nuclear levy excludes various overheads such as Security, R&D, Insurance or the building cost of new nuclear plant.

New reactors in the US are estimated to cost between $12 billion & $24 billion. Margaret Thatcher scrapped her Government’s nuclear building programme when she realised its true cost.

Likewise arguing that intermittent wind power is ‘inefficient’ is like saying that the sun switches off at night.

It is only a problem in one place. So you build lots of wind turbines, far apart, and join them with a grid. The wind is always blowing somewhere.

This was proven in the north German state of Schleswig-Holstein which already generates 100% of its power this way in peak months.

Today they get 39% with a target of 100% by 2020. Recent University of Kassel field experiments have confirmed that integrating wind, photovoltaic and biogas generation could reliably provide ALL German electricity. Germany actually has LESS wind power potential than the UK.

The UK has 40% of all of Europe’s potential capacity.

We are limited by a failure to invest in our grid capacity, not wind’s claimed ‘inefficiency’.

Mark Brown,Chairman, Transition Town, High Wycombe.