that are more than 2 km from any human settlement. These areas are largely
excluded from wind-farm development because they are tranquil, and it’s
essential to protect tranquil places from industrialization. If you want to
avoid objections to your wind farm, pick any piece of land that is not
coloured black or white.

Some of these environmentalists who have good hearts but confused minds are almost a barrier to tackling climate change.

Malcolm Wicks, Minister of State for Energy

We are drawing to the close of Part I. The assumption was that we want
to get off fossil fuels, for one or more of the reasons listed in Chapter 1 –
climate change, security of supply, and so forth. Figure 18.9 shows how
much power we currently get from renewables and nuclear. They amount
to just 4% of our total power consumption.

The two conclusions we can draw from Part I are:

  1. To make a difference, renewable facilities have to be country-sized.
  2. For any renewable facility to make a contribution comparable to our
    current consumption, it has to be country-sized. To get a big contribu-
    tion from wind, we used wind farms with the area of Wales. To get a
Figure 18.9. Production of renewables and nuclear energy in the UK in 2006. All powers are expressed per-person, as usual. The breakdown of the renewables on the right hand side is scaled up 100-fold vertically.