WE already have 362 turbines on- and off-shore and the Welsh Assembly, theoretically charged with nurturing the principality but in practice Labour-dominated and taking its orders from Downing Street, intends to approve the erection of a further 400 (Bragg and friends try to stop wind farm, News; and Blow them away, Editorial, last week).

Walkers everywhere will be confronted with these 400ft monsters, strategically placed on hilltops and visible for miles. All this is being done despite informed engineering opinion, including the assembly’s own planning officer, that any energy thus generated will be minimal and spasmodic.

This is in no way to deny the threat of global warming. It is precisely because opponents wish to see effective steps being taken now (biomass, tidal, filters on existing power plants etc) that we are horrified to see huge sums and years of precious time wasted pursuing the wrong solution.

Where are the Welsh Braggs and Boningtons prepared to protest against this rape?

Dave Lees, Swansea

SPIN CYCLES: There is nothing “very intelligent about the giant wind farms”. The suggestion that they will save significant CO2 emission is scuppered by the government’s own figure issued by Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) late last year in its consultation review on climate change.

By 2010, renewable electricity generation, mainly wind, will save just 9.2m tonnes carbon dioxide emission per year. To quote the chief executive of E.ON UK (formerly Powergen), Paul Golby, “Without the renewable obligation certificates nobody would be building wind farms”.

Dr John Etherington, Llanhowell, Pembrokeshire

FOREIGN POWERS: The fact that the rush for wind farm planning applications is being led largely by foreign companies is interesting. The German company E.ON UK, one of the largest electricity grid operators in Europe, has subjected the tiny village of Catworth in rural Cambridgeshire to the so-called virtues of wind power in its attempt to impose 110m-high turbines less than 500m away from a rural conservation area.

Yet the same company has published Wind Report 2004 in Germany stating that wind is too weak to generate much power and cannot significantly reduce the need for conventional generation.

The villagers of Catworth find this galling. All to simply obtain more renewable obligation certificates?

Ian Hare, Catworth, Cambridgeshire

SUNNY SIDE UP: Your article prompts me to ask why Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace support ugly, expensive wind turbines when surely the simplest way to save energy would be for the government to make it mandatory for developers to install solar panels in all new-build homes? Grants should be made available to householders to help with the cost of fitting them in existing homes. Solar panels are unobtrusive and work, even on cloudy days.

Mary Keenan, Maenan, Conwy

BREEZY DOES IT? To contemplate the purchase of electricity at £69 per megawatt hour, as is proposed with the erection of wind turbines, is a folly as great as that of Rover making cars costing more to produce than the market could realise on sale.

Having spent two weeks last year on the windiest of the Canary Isles (Fuerteventura) we noted that the turbines there were revolving for not much more than 50% of the time, and were frequently barely moving.

Wind power is a sop to the green lobby, and as such should be discarded, with the money spent in developing modern coal-fired generation, where the CO2 and particulates can be captured at source.

Geoff Williams, Sutton Coldfield

GONE WITH THE WIND: Wind energy is the only non-carbon generation source that can be deployed on a large scale in the short-term. If I am wrong and nuclear power (or, more likely, wave or tidal power) renders wind farms defunct, they can be removed in days leaving no trace.

If the Romans had used nuclear power, we’d still be managing the radioactive waste today.

Matt Partridge, Director, Gamesa Energy UK

ENERGETIC PROTEST: Rural communities are being ignored and unspoilt landscapes turned into industrial wind power generating sites.

Local communities need to give more support to protests and groups need to liaise or Scotland will soon become a landscape of huge turbines.

Gregor White, Elvanfoot, South Lanarkshire