Making electricity from the wind is a beautiful and elegant feat of ingenuity.

However, people seem to be unaware that huge wind turbines produce rather piddling amounts of power.

Each of the turbines proposed for Escrick will generate, when it is windy, two megawatts of power. Drax power station, by contrast, pumps out 4,000 megawatts.

So if, say, you wanted to replace Drax with wind turbines, you would need more than 2,000 of the things (not to mention some way of storing any excess electricity so you could tap into it when the wind wasn't blowing).

If you wanted to produce all the country's electricity from the wind, you'd need something in excess of 40,000 hulking great turbines.

Unfortunately, despite its many wonderful attributes, wind power is going to be a small part of the solution to reduce carbon emissions. So it is a bit unfair of the wind enthusiasts to say to people 'wind power is good so you should jolly well put up with a 100 metre turbine in your back garden'.

Simon Hadlington,

Derwent House,

Main Street, Thorganby.

Updated: 10:34 Tuesday, February 15, 2005