Sir – The proposal to erect a wind turbine on the outskirts of Oxford could provide much-needed electricity to the homes and businesses of the locality.

Wind turbines typically produce 30 per cent of their maximum capacity, though different sites will produce different outputs depending on local factors.

The irrefutable problem is that the peak supply of this power will not necessarily coincide with peak demand.

This is the key advantage conventional power generation has over wind power – peaks and troughs in demand can be relatively well predicted and supplies of energy adjusted at those times.

However, with the increasing rate of fossil fuel consumption and accompanying pollution renewable and ‘clean’ energy supplies must play an increasing role in our energy mix. In most cases this will be at the expense of aesthetics in the British countryside, which is governed effectively by some of the strictest and most considered planning laws in the world.

Visits to other European countries and those further afield will yield plenty of examples of how lax, endemically corruptible planning laws can result in countryside which has had its beauty and character compromised.

The environmental sanctimony which accompanies the push for renewable power is closely matched by the strength of feeling over the damage the structures do to the landscape. People questioning the merits of wind turbines and the (unproven theory of) anthropogenic global warming are labelled crackpots and heretics, while the important and influential environmental lobby has, in many cases, been hijacked by extremists whose actions often alienate, rather than inform, the public at large.

If a wind turbine is erected at the said site, I hope it will be because it will provide a viable part-alternative to our energy supplies and not because it will be a highly visible but ultimately gratuitous piece of public relations.

Adam Potterton, Oxford