Wind power is a competitive source of clean, green energy

Canberra Times
Thursday 4/11/2010 Page: 18

John McKerral (Letters, November 2) claims that using wind power, with gas back-up, in the electricity grid will cost $1149 to avoid a tonne of CO₂. This is a completely nonsensical figure. In fact, wind power costs about $70/MW of power generated, compared with about $40 from coal. As this use of wind rather than coal avoids almost a tonne of emitted CO₂, the cost of avoiding emissions is perhaps $40 a tonne, not $1149.

Wind power needs back-up, generally from other grid sources of power, and for this reason it probably has a limit of, say, 20% in a grid system. However, up to that limit (which we are far below at present) it is a thoroughly competitive, virtually non-greenhouse gas emitting, source of electricity. Brian Hatch (Letters, November 2) claims that "accurate CO₂ records back to 1812 show that for at least three periods CO₂ was higher than now, including a spike in 1940".

He doesn't make it clear whether he's talking about a spike in the concentration level of CO₂ in the atmosphere, or a spike in emission levels, but either way there isn't the faintest scientific evidence for what he claims.

What the scientific record shows is that both concentration levels of CO₂, in the atmosphere, and the level at which we emit CO₂, from our unprecedented burning of tens of billions of tonnes of fossil fuels each year, are much higher in recent years than at any other period in the last 200 years, (and indeed are far higher than for hundreds of thousands of years).

Paul Pollard, O'Connor