Fossil future

Your very interesting feature on carbon storage (

, 25 February) highlighted the serious attention now being given to this technique and, by default, shows how wide of the mark are any daydreams of a future powered by renewable energy.

People with a serious understanding of the issues know that fossil fuels will be the key to energy production for the indefinite future and that ensuring this technology has an acceptably low impact on the environment is the greatest priority.

This should be yet another indication that windmills and wave farms and the like are only ever going to have a marginal impact on the energy provision of a developed economy like the UK, never mind massive and rapidly growing ones like China.

Coal power generation, backed up by a certain amount of nuclear energy, will be the way we light our homes until some new technology such as fusion power comes along, and that could be hundreds of years away.

I suggest that the massive amount of hype around so-called renewables is actually doing damage if it deflects expertise and funding away from the bigger issues, such as the one dealt with by your article.