Published: Thursday, 25th June, 2009 6:00am

Letter: Renewable energy at the right price

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WHEN planning for our energy future we must tackle climate change and aim for security of supply and acceptable cost.

Reducing demand and improving efficiency of use will be very important, but we must also use low carbon sources of energy supply.

The government has a target to obtain 15% of our energy from renewable sources by 2020. This will reduce our output of climate changing greenhouse gases and, by making us less dependent on imported fossil fuels, will protect us from price rises and supply interruptions and improve our balance of payments.

The government"s Renewables Advisory Board suggested about 28% of our electricity could come from wind-farms by 2020 with another 12% from other renewable sources.

This would require a large number of turbines but many would be off-shore. No-one is suggesting we try to generate all our electricity from the wind.

The Board did not predict a large contribution from solar photovoltaic panels but thought that they could be fitted on about 5% of UK homes by 2020. The new installation at Little Heath School is an example of a domestic-scale installation. Germany already has such panels fitted to about half a million homes.

John Booth

Reading Friends of the Earth,

Instow Road,

Earley