THE letter about "windmills" in last week's paper invited us all to do our homework on line to check the facts about the cost of power, and I took his advice and checked the facts presented.

First of all, the paper by Professors Noel and Pollitt of Cambridge University he quotes is mysteriously absent from the parliamentary website.  But a wider search revealed that they are professors of economics rather than engineering, employed by a business school, and the paper was actually published in a magazine called "Parliamentary Brief", a vehicle for lobbyists provided free to politicians and policy makers rather than a serious academic journal.  I was unable to read the paper itself but among their other publications was one praising the profits to be made from shale gas extraction – the same technique that recently caused a small earthquake in Blackpool.

Secondly, he claims that  "each household subsidises wind and solar by over £100 a year".  He fails to provide a source for this information, but a quick search found the following: "According to....Ofgem data, average British dual-fuel customers have seen their bills rise by £205 over the last two years. But of that, only £4 comes from support schemes for renewables.  In fact, analyses by both Ofgem and the Committee on Climate Change have shown that bill increases in recent years are primarily due to fluctuating wholesale gas prices.  This year, renewables support schemes are expected to make up £22 of average household bills following recently announced price rises of around £80" –  this came from an online journal, http://www.energy">http://www.energy

efficiencynews.com.  ThiThis seems like a much more credible figure to me.

Now we come to the cost of nuclear power.  In a paper published by the Nuclear Energy Institute, an American organisation, called "The Cost of New Generating Capacity in Perspective", I found data suggesting that on-shore wind power and nuclear power should provide energy at roughly comparable prices, and that water-powered generation was much cheaper; however it also quoted work done by MIT which showed that quoted costs for nuclear should be increased by around 27 per cent to take account of the additional risks involved.  If those are the best estimates the nuclear industry itself can produce, wind and water power look like the way to go for cheap and safe electricity, with or without subsidies.

But for me, the real problem is how are we going to keep the lights on in the years to come, and one answer comes from an article written by Pierre Noel, and published in the March 2012 edition of Parliamentary Brief.  "Weather-adjusted residential gas demand has declined by more than 20 bcm since 2008, suggesting energy efficiency investments and behavioural change driven by higher prices.  Industrial and power generation demand was lower in 2011 than even in 2009, at the height of the financial crisis".  Prof Noel seems to think that this is a bad thing – but in a world where climate change could cause chaos, I think this is the best news I've read for weeks.  What a shame it comes from such a dubious source.

I will leave your readers to decide for themselves whether they want to accept advice from economists about what forms of energy generation are safe and reliable – with their recent track record no-one will believe their predictions about which costs more.  I'm off to see if there is anything else I can do to make my house cheaper to heat and more pleasant to live in.

– Jacky Smith, Coalway.