Buy stocks in candlemaking companies and prepare to share your bath with your nearest and dearest. The coming “windfarm revolution” could take us back to 1974 when the lights flickered out.

The Government has decided to try to generate 10 per cent of our energy by 2010 from wind turbines, most of them, rather like the policy, all at sea. It is cloud-cuckoo-land energy politics. It is not going to work. What is even more galling, this example of eco-correctness will do nothing to curb climate change.

For wind energy to produce 10 per cent of our electricity even by 2020 we will have to build 20 x 2 megawatt windmills every week from today until then. There is but a snowflake in Hell’s chance of achieving this, especially when we take into account the justified opposition to wind farms because they will despoil our last remaining wilderness — not to mention the impact of their spinning blades on birds. One iconic red kite was sliced in two in Wales only a couple of weeks ago.

Moreover, wind energy is unreliable. Its inherently intermittent supply means that wind turbines have to be backed up by, yes, good old fossils fuels. In addition, they do not link in easily with the national grid.

But then comes some breathtaking hypocrisy. The Government is acting green and clean in Britain but, since 1997, it has put no less than £1 billion of public cash into coal-fired power stations in the developing world. This means that, for every tonne of carbon dioxide emissions saved at home (at the cost of our own coal industry), we have exported three tonnes abroad. Overall, this probably means that the UK energy budget is not even carbon neutral. What a shambles.

Current government policies could be both disastrous and expensive for us all. The experience of some of the countries that have gone down the renewable route shows that consumers could see bills rise by seven 10 per cent or more.

Worse than the expense, yesterday’s announcement demonstrates how Britain is heading in the wrong direction, basing an energy policy, not on growth and development, but on the environment. We must ditch the foolish predication of energy policy on the quixotic notion that we can manage climate in a “predictable” manner. Even if Britain makes great sacrifices to minimise its carbon-dioxide output, it will make no difference to “global warming”. The facts speak for themselves.

The UK accounts for a mere 2.5 per cent of consumption of world energy production. This proportion will, however, fall in the next few years because of the exponential growth in energy demand from the developing world, especially in China and India. Today, “renewables” in the UK, like wind and wave, contribute a measly 0.08 per cent of world energy production.

Thus, if we allow for a reduction in the UK contribution to world energy demand to 2 per cent by 2020, and couple this with a rise in UK “renewables” to 15 per cent by the same date (which is highly optimistic), then UK “renewables” might just contribute a pathetic 0.3 per cent of world energy demand in 17 years time. The cumulo-nimbus clouds must be thundering in derision.

It is time to abandon green cant and to design an energy policy that will power the British economy. It is no surprise that China, Finland, France, India, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Taiwan, and the US all recognise the inevitable place of nuclear power in their future energy mixes. If you believe in “global warming” (and I don’t), there is no other realistic choice. Blow out wind farms, go for nuclear, new clean coal, and the geological longterm storage of carbon.

The author is Professor Emeritus of Biogeography at the University of London

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