Not enough power

In response to the letter from the “Climate Matters Group” may I point out two things?

One, the UK only generates at most 3% of the greenhouse gasses so you could wipe out the total UK population and it would have no effect on climate change. The group seem to support this by saying that carbon emissions are rising irrespective of which country produces them.

Try looking at China, India and the USA, which contribute the major emissions.

Two, if the UK stops using its own reserves of fossil fuels, but we still need power, then the carbon emissions are still being produced, just elsewhere on the globe.

In December 2021 and January 2022 there was a period of about six weeks where the wind was light and the weather was overcast.

During this period renewables only generated about 1% of the required electricity.

Even if you covered the whole of the UK in millions of wind farms and solar panels you would still not generate the power if the wind and sun are not there.

Intermittent wind is not a red herring as they say in their letter, it happens and so do cloudy days.

At the moment nuclear and tidal generation appear to be the only two forms of power generation that do not produce on-going emissions and can provide consistent power, but they do produce some carbon emissions during production, just like manufacturing wind generators and solar panels and the production of batteries to store the excess power.

The UK government on its own cannot produce a strategy that will protect us from climate disaster because this is a global problem and we are not one of the major players.

Derek Harding, Wokingham