Letter to the Editor: For once I agree with Dave Haskell about something, although not for the same reasons. His most recent letter (Cambrian News, 22 February) raises the issue of electric vehicles, and whether road structures and car parks are capable of bearing their weight. If only Mr Haskell would do a little research before sending in this nonsense!It didn’t take me long online to find a paper by a Russell Simmons, chair of the Parking Structures Group of the British Parking Association. He states: “The good news is that our car park structures can be... strengthened when required, allowing them to cope with the increased weight of electric vehicles – all using proven technologies.”

What I find impossible to believe is that every fossil fuel vehicle can be replaced by an electric one.Although lithium is a relatively common substance on a global scale, mining it in the huge quantities that would be required would be very environmentally damaging. That is why it is crucial that alternatives to the private car are found and made acceptable to the general public. This is only one of the many very serious problems that our addiction to fossil fuels is confronting us with. It is not going to be easy.

In an earlier letter (Cambrian News, 8 February) he brought up the problem of the disposal of wind turbines once they reach the end of their useful life. Again his lack of research lets him down. Currently roughly 90 per cent of the raw material used in a wind turbine is steel, which can be removed from site and recycled - possibly into new wind turbines!

The main recycling problem is actually the blades, which are made from a mix of glass fibre and resins for light weight and strength. They are not designed to be easily destroyed. However technologies are now emerging for recycling existing blades and newer materials currently under development will make them easier to recycle.

Not only that but decommissioning is normally a condition of licencing a new wind farm and his vision of rows of rotting wind turbine hulks out at sea is actually very unlikely to happen. As for the public picking up a horrific price tag for wind power it is pretty clear now that energy produced from wind (and other renewable resources) is much cheaper than the fossil fuel and nuclear alternatives.

Lyn Jenkins, his partner in the anti-wind power lobby, a few weeks ago claimed that “millions” of trees have been felled on Natural Resources Wales land to facilitate the installation of wind turbines. Rather surprisingly he is actually almost correct! The total is 1.9 million trees, and that is a lot of trees.

What he doesn’t make clear is that this is about 0.9 per cent of NRW’s forest cover, which puts the figure into context.I do hope that readers of the Cambrian News are not taken in by the half-truths and misinformation put about by the those who wish to maintain the status quo, with the all the carbon emissions and potential climate chaos that go along with it.

Jeremy Moore,

Penrhyncoch