Dominic Lawson: The answer is not blowing in the wind

It is always pleasant to see friends coming into an unexpected windfall, especially if their standard of living has been under threat. So I was delighted to hear, a year or two back, from a lovely couple who had been finding it increasingly difficult to finance the upkeep of the family estate, which, being on the rocky periphery of the British Isles, had never been a satisfactory producer of agricultural income. Now, however, they had become farmers of wind, and the wonderful thing was, they explained: "The Government has fiddled the figures so that we absolutely can't fail to sell the electricity, and we're also guaranteed a high price for it."

I've seen their wind turbines. They were tiny compared with the latest models, but I still thought that they were a hideous blot on a beautiful landscape. On the other hand, if they had been paying for my children's school fees I suppose I would have taken a very different view. Presumably it is also some aesthetic sense of cause and effect which has led Sir Jonathan Porritt to declare: "I find wind turbines objects of compelling beauty."

Sir Jonathan is the chairman of the Sustainable Development Commission, which yesterday produced a report warning the Government against expanding nuclear power in the quest to generate large-scale energy which does not contribute to the greenhouse effect through the emission of CO2.

Sir Jonathan has also declared: "If there is one scientist you would listen to, it would be Jim Lovelock." And Sir James Lovelock, inventor of the Gaia theory, has for the past two years been begging his fellow environmentalists to listen to his pleas that only a dramatic increase in nuclear power has a chance of saving the Earth from the destructive forces caused by global warming. As Sir James warned in February 2004: "Wind farms won't cut it at all. It's absurd, just a gesture. Time is of the essence."

The facts bear Lovelock out. In the Energy White Paper of 2003, the Government placed greatest emphasis on wind power to meet its objective of reducing carbon emissions. Yet according to the Government's own projections, wind power will lead to a reduction of 1.6 per cent in Britain's total carbon emissions by the end of the decade. Consider, too, that this country contributes little more than 2 per cent of global man-made carbon emissions: our heavily consumer-subsidised wind power programme - if carried out - will reduce global emissions by less than 0.04 per cent.

We should bear those figures in mind when listening to the executive director of Greenpeace, Stephen Tindale, condemn the blocking, last Friday, of plans to build 27 turbines, each 377ft in height, on a ridge just outside the Lake District National Park: "I hope those responsible will be willing to explain to future generations how they played their part in allowing the savage grip of global warming to trash the countryside and claim hundreds of thousands of lives."

It is of course fear of the trashing of the countryside which animates so many of the opponents of wind farms. While it is true that some people are concerned about the effect on property values - the Nimby effect - many more are worried about what will happen to land which is in no individual's back yard. While Jonathan Porritt may indeed find wind turbines beautiful artefacts, it is precisely the fact that they are man-made which so appals the hundreds of thousands for whom unadorned nature is the most treasured vista in their lives.

Nevertheless, the British people have always been prepared to put up with despoliation of the countryside if we can be persuaded that it is in the nation's vital interest. We put up, for example, with the creation of countless aerodromes throughoutsouthern England when it was clear that they were essential to win the battle of the skies against the Luftwaffe.

If British wind farms really were the answer to global warming, then a similar argument based on national necessity would be valid. But the answer, my friends, is not blowin' in the wind. The German experience illustrates many of the reasons. Because recent German governments have needed the support of the Greens to form an administration, there has been an effective veto against new nuclear power. So the country has engineered a vast expansion of wind power, building 14,500 turbines. But not a single fossil-fuel power station has been decommissioned. This, of course, is because consumers of energy like to have their central heating on when it's cold, not just when it's windy.

As Martin Fuchs, the chief of E.On, Germany's largest energy supplier, said in Munich last year: "The wind, sadly, does not blow where large quantities of power are required ... on September 12th last year wind power contributed 38 per cent of our grid power requirements at all times, but on September 30th the figure went down to 0.2 per cent."

But as Dr Fuchs went on to explain, the biggest problems are caused when the energy generated by wind is more than is required: "At times of strong winds the majority of energy produced between Oldenburg and Rendsburg sloshes south and in waves. In accordance with the laws of physics it seeks the path of least resistance, escaping eastwards and westwards into neighbouring European grids. Thus German wind power is increasingly taking both Dutch and Polish grids to the limits of their capacity. Only by intervention at European political level were we able to maintain control of the situation."

E.On, as it happens, is one of the biggest promoters of onshore wind power in the UK: last week its employees were caught out attempting to manipulate an online poll, which had asked its readers to vote on whether E.On should be allowed to build a wind farm on Denshaw Moor. But one can see why its business managers should have stooped to such practices. The British Government, by guaranteeing electricity producers a consumer-paid subsidy of about £45 per megawatt produced by renewable energy, regardless of the form it takes, have encouraged a speculative rush into wind power, which is the least capital-intensive.

The National Audit Office last year warned that "the returns earned by most onshore wind projects are likely to exceed any higher rate that a particular developer might require... At the buy-out price the level of support provided by consumers is in excess of that needed". The Government, however, is content to let consumers continue to subsidise these arrangements to the tune of almost £1bn a year.

There is at least one happy side-effect: my wind-farming friends can continue to pay their domestic staff and send their own children to public school for many years to come.

d.lawson@independent.co.uk