The UK can’t run on renewable electricity

PROFESSOR Emeritus Tegid Wyn Jones, of UCL, is a physics professor.

He states in his letter (Western Mail, February 3) that the Institute of Welsh Affairs declaration that Wales could meet all its energy needs from renewables by 2035 did not state how electricity storage was to be achieved.

He says that the report was “an inadequate plan for Welsh future energy requirements... because of the lack of a storage solution and the reliance on unproven renewable energy sources”.

I’m not a physics professor, but I have been saying such obvious things in the press since 1995!

Under a high pressure, the wind produces very little electricity, because wind turbines are on stop.

Two weeks ago many thousands of UK wind turbines consistently generated less than 3 gigawatts [GW]in total, when UK demand was 45GW. The UK needs 60GW now in very cold weather, and will, in future, need a further 30GW for 30 million electric cars. Now, to comply with government targets, Ofgem wants to rip out gas central heating from all UK homes, in favour of electricity from wind energy. Crazy! That will need a further 60GW at least. Gas heats most UK homes.

So the UK will need 150GW largely from wind to meet its target of zero carbon emissions by 2050. That’s complete cloud cuckoo land! Even an extra 20,000 gigantic 2MW 400ft wind turbines (and the UK is only 94,500 sq miles in area) will only generate 10GW total on average... but under calm high pressure, they will generate almost zilch... and one cannot store large amounts of electricity, as Prof Jones concedes.

Finally, in the Western Mail on January 23, Prof Tegid Wyn Jones discussed “the truly excellent report Zero Carbon Britain by the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) in Machynlleth”. Does he know that CAT cheats by using fossilfuel-generated electricity from the National Grid at times? I have it in writing from a former director! If they cannot even run a renewable energy centre on 100% renewables, how on earth can they run the whole UK on them?

Lyn Jenkins Gwbert, Cardigan