Madam, - Following the suggestion of Michael Kelly, communications manager of Eirgrid plc (Letters, October 25th), I have been looking his company's website. I see that the estimated total wind generation from Irish wind farms reached 620 megawatts (MW) early on November 30th. this represents 11 per cent of Ireland's current total fossil generating capacity and a record contribution to date. We might seem to be well in line to achieve the EU target of 13.2 per cent of renewable electricity by 2010.
But I also see that during the morning of November 9th, a working day with demand rising sharply, the wind contribution was close to zero. On another working day, October 20th, the wind input averaged 30MW throughout the day against the total potential of some 620MW.
Surely the implications are that, even when the present renewable total of 620MW is doubled to become 20 per cent of Ireland's electricity needs and wind farms stretch from coast to coast, we will continue to require the full complement of fossil fuel generating stations to be available on days such as November 9th and October 20th.
Additionally, the powering up and down of large generating stations is surely inefficient and costly, and in doing so is not a proportionally greater volume of CO2 emitted? Are we not going to end up paying for two supplies of electricity when we only need one, and achieve little if any CO2 saving?
As for Ireland's CO2 emissions, even the UK's emissions represent only 2 per cent of the world total; are we not going to hurt ourselves so much more than the bigger players? With China (where a new coal power station is being commissioned each week for the next five years), India and the US not being signatories, it is difficult to regard the Kyoto agreement with respect.
As EU industry commissioner Gunter Vertheugen pointed out recently, our environmental leadership is in danger of significantly undermining Europe's competitive position as production is redirected to parts of the world where there are different (or zero) environmental standards. Has this whole thing been properly thought through? - Yours, etc,
CHARLES HAZELL,
Knockbritt,
Fethard,
Co Tipperary.