SIR – Jeremy Burden (Letters, March 1) suggests that rather than building offshore wind farms, funds should go towards “a totally reliable source, namely wave and tidal power”. This proposal ignores the fact that there are no commercially proven technologies for either wave or tidal power. In fact, utilities and major engineering companies have decided that there is insufficient certainty regarding the development of these technologies to justify further investment.
Meanwhile politicians in Scotland continue to throw taxpayers’ money after unsustainable energy projects. Last month they announced a budget of £14 million for the first year of their new body, Wave Energy Scotland.
David Gibb
Inverness SIR – Our local authority has recently turned down an application for a solar farm on 57 acres of prime Cheshire pasture land nearby.
During that planning meeting, concern was expressed that permission had been given, by the same committee, to a solar farm on a neighbouring estate. 79,968 solar panels will be built across a site the size of 32 football pitches, on land that could just about be described as brownfield (an ex-RAF airfield) but which in rural Shropshire is surely greenfield.
Until every flat roof on every factory on every trading estate across the land – supermarkets included – has solar panels, there is no need to encroach on brownfield sites, let alone greenfield pasture.
I W Macleod
Whitchurch, Shropshire SIR – I suspect Boris Johnson is more likely to succeed as a future prime minister, rather than in his earlier ambition to be a rock star (report, March 1).
The photograph accompanying the article has him strumming his guitar and in full voice. However, any guitarist knows that with the capo on the 5th fret as shown, you cannot play the chord he seems to illustrate using the frets above- the result is discordant nonsense.
Keith Richards can relax.
Peter Kievenaar
Chelsworth, Suffolk SIR – If we are to have a new Parliament “Fit for the 21st century”, as the Speaker John Bercow desires, please could it also be made “absolutely clear”?
Philip Welch
Richmond, North Yorkshire