Ministers Wind Plan

John Hutton announced this week that up to 7,000 turbines could be installed off the UK's coastline in a bid to boost the production of wind energy 30-fold by 2020.

Speaking at a conference in Berlin, the Energy Secretary insisted that tough choices had to be made to effect the shift to low-carbon power sources."There is the potential, we believe, out there, using the resources that there are around the UK to generate maybe all of the electricity that households use from offshore wind sources....We should see whether we can maximise that potential because it's obviously in the nation's interest, in the world's interest, for us to make sure that more of our energy comes from clean sources."

The draft plan would allow companies to develop up to 25 GW of offshore wind, in addition to the 8 GW already planned, in a bid to power all of the UK's homes by 2020.

However most analysts, environmentalists and power firms remain sceptical about the targets leading the critics were the Renewable Energy Foundation who claim"The scales envisaged are quite unrealistic,uncontrollable fluctuations in the output of 33 GW of wind would, if unconstrained, almost certainly place exceptional technical demands on the indispensable conventional generators.