Energy innovation

SIR – Colin Bower (Letters, August 14) says of fracking: “It is time to accept this incredible discovery and get on with the job.” Yet viable coal supplies are already exhausted and North Sea oil is a fast-diminishing resource. How many other “incredible discoveries” of natural resources will remain if we exhaust natural gas by fracking?

Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (Business, August 11) has pointed out that, despite extensive fracking in the US, its government is supporting 75 projects at major scientific research centres to develop new methods of storing surplus electricity (from renewables) for use at times of high demand – and that economically viable solutions are already in sight.

Success in this field would change the future of energy supply. Never mind fracking and Hinkley Point: we need to support scientific research, and the native British genius that gave the world the jet engine, the hovercraft and the internet. Richard Shaw Dunstable, Bedfordshire