Some suggest we should produce all the electricity we require from renewable technology so there won’t be a need for gas or coal power stations, with or without carbon capture and storage, and they are quite clear we should avoid anything nuclear.

This would certainly be an excellent way of ensuring energy security for the country, as well as reducing our carbon emissions significantly, but like other proposals that seem too good to be true, it probably is.

Relying completely on renewable energy must take into account that we will need three times the electricity we now use, as all our cooking and water heating will be with electricity rather than gas if we are serious about reducing the CO2 from fossil fuels. Added to this, our electric cars will need topping up from the mains each night, and there will also be more of us to use electricity.

As islands off the north-west coast of Europe, we have raging seas, strong tides and powerful winds (and a lot of cloud) but they are unlikely to be enough as the investment needed in renewable energy systems is staggering.

We would require a land area the size of Wales covered with wind turbines, and about half that area out at sea, as well as wave technology along 500 kilometres of coastline. In addition, photovoltaic cells would have to cover an area half the size of Wales, and three-quarters of the country would need to be planted to provide the biofuels if we were to rely on this source of energy.

Given the fact that planning opposition and National Parks would get in the way, apart from the higher cost per unit of produced electricity, it’s unlikely that we could ever produce more than one-third of our needs with renewable technology. Even this is a severe target as we would require a new high-voltage direct-current national grid to bring the power from the margins of the country, as well as a base load of electricity, from gas, coal or nuclear, for when the wind doesn’t blow, or at night time or in winter.

Technically, we could also invest in de-centralised energy provision involving generation of electricity from new gas boilers, solar panels, and ground source heating for new houses, schools and commerce. However, it is unlikely to be enough as feed-in tariffs, that is selling power to the Grid, would need to be high to encourage investment.

It seems, then, that we will need a mix of methods to produce electricity, and as well as the renewables, including Saharan solar power, up to half will still have to come from coal and nuclear-powered sources.