Sir – I was depressed to read on page 25 of last week’s issue that a proposal for a solar farm at Cornbury Park had been turned down. One of the reasons mentioned was that it would be “industrial in character and scale”.

Sad as it might seem, we are going to need industrial-scale renewable-energy facilities, and lots of them — on land and at sea.

We need to drastically reduce our use of hydrocarbons: both because of their contribution to global climate change, but also because they are non-renewable.

Ultimately we could and should have an energy economy that is 100 per cent renewable, but we are going to have to work at it seriously.

Chris Osman, Oxford