27-12-01 A lot of hot air is spoken about wind power. One of the more outlandish claims is that it offers an easy solution to the twin problems of global warming and Britain's increasing reliance on gas imports from highly volatile regions of the world. As an island nation on the north western fringe of Europe, the UK should be well positioned to harness the power of wind, particularly of the offshore variety.
Hence the announcement of plans to build Europe's biggest wind farm on Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. Even British Energy, which is best known as the UK's main producer of nuclear electricity, is a convert to the idea of wind power, which is why it has a half share in the Lewis project.
However, the contribution that nature can make to solving Britain's long-term energy needs has to be put into perspective. The Lewis wind farm, if the locals allow it to be built, will occupy 28,000 acres of land and will consist of 300 turbine towers with a theoretical capacity of 600 MW. That is about half the output of British Energy's Sizewell nuclear reactor.

But unlike Sizewell, which runs more or less non-stop, the wind cannot be relied on to blow in the right direction 24 hours a day. The actual output from Lewis, therefore, is more likely to be about 200 MW. To replace all of Britain's nuclear reactors with wind farms would mean covering an area the size of Yorkshire with turbines, and even then there would be a problem if the wind wasn't blowing.
The Stornaway Trust, on whose land the Lewis wind farm would be sited, may not care about the noise created by 300 turbines nor their impact on the tourist trade. But imagine having hundreds more farms scattered all along Britain's west coast.

Tony Blair's long-awaited energy review will heavily promote the increased use of renewable sources of energy, which has been construed by some as the death knell for any new nukes. What the leaked draft of the review actually says is that there are "good grounds for taking a positive stance to keeping the nuclear option open". Nuclear power remains handicapped by its higher cost and the problem of waste disposal.
But if Mr Blair could end his infatuation with reprocessing -- which both increases the lifecycle costs of nuclear plants and perpetuates the problem of nuclear proliferation -- then we might be half way to a balanced energy policy in which both renewables and nuclear have a role to play.