Letter: Elegance on the wind and power beneath the waves
Your support helps us to tell the story
From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging.
At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground. Your donation allows us to keep sending journalists to speak to both sides of the story.
The Independent is trusted by Americans across the entire political spectrum. And unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock Americans out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. We believe quality journalism should be available to everyone, paid for by those who can afford it.
Your support makes all the difference.Sir: Your leading article, 'No such thing as a free source of energy', mentions the environmental objections to most forms of energy generation, but ignores the one that has been given a clean bill of health by the Government: wave energy, when the generators are stationed away from the coast.
No major deleterious effects of the converters themselves could be identified, provided that the converters are well offshore. (Energy Paper 42, Department of Energy and the Energy Support Unit at Harwell.)
Some of us who are critical of official policy have always suspected that the Government supported wind farms on land because it knew that in a crowded island they could never develop sufficiently to become a major supplier of the grid, and would not, therefore, be demanding of large-scale investment. The only way that wind power could be extended sufficiently would be by building the wind turbines offshore - if you were going to go to sea, the natural thing to harvest would be the energy of the waves, which are a concentrated form of the wind.
Yours truly,
DAVID ROSS
London, SE5
28 February
The writer is author of 'Energy from the Waves' (Pergamon, 1981; OUP forthcoming).
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments