WIND FARMS: JUST 48 hours after Wear Valley councillors approved, by a margin of one vote, an application for yet another four huge wind turbines, near Tow Law, comes a report saying that none of the existing farms in England are meeting the Government's target of 30 per cent efficiency.

Yet there will soon be 26 of them in this area.

I know the council cannot take the efficiency or effectiveness of such an application into consideration when making its decision, but perhaps this report might have caused one councillor to abstain or vote the other way.

I am not averse to green energy, but let us have a solution that works. The only reason we have onshore wind farms is because taxes are used to subsidise every kilowatt they generate. No generating company would entertain the idea without the subsidy.

The news that a company plans to install turbines in the gas supply line to an industrial premises in Teesside, to generate electricity that will be green and unsubsidised, makes more sense and is great news. Let's have more of this sort of thinking and doing.

For example, are we making the best use of North-East reservoirs? If they are not all producing electricity now, they should be. - Derek Thornton, Stanley Crook, County Durham.