Helen's enthusiasm for what appears sustainable is way off the mark, and why politicians have us on the wrong bearing.

The photo shows a typical solar array in a solar farms. That is "Green Energy" which works for a third of the day, for 80 percent of the year, and where crystalline silicon solar panels will start having significant dips in energy production, requiring replacement and disposal within the expected 25 year effective life.

And all the while, coal and gas are required in the background to fill in the large gaps to keep society running, and therefore nil reduction in "The Demon" CO2.

It is "Green Energy" requiring constant cleaning, placed in arrays that effectively sterilises the ground underneath, exposing it to wind and water erosion and rendering it useless for other purposes - but that said, in well wet and green (colour!) England I have seen well spaced panels and sheep co-existing.

It is "Green Energy" that requires high grade quarried quartz - not sand - to make the 'glass' and rare earth metals and some nasty chemicals to manufacture the silicon cells and glass coatings. Then there are aluminium or stainless steel framing, steel support systems, connective copper cabling, and with end-of-life waste that can be recycled only in Japan, which struggles to cope with recycling its own solar panels. In time this recycling capacity will develop - but at what cost?

It is "Green Energy" that, as with the magnificently engineered wind turbine blades which cannot be recycled and are broken up and buried, PV cannot be easily recycled. Furthermore, due to leachate from the panels, it poses serious ground contamination issues. PV requires huge amounts of energy to manufacture and more to strip components for recycling.

What a great leap ahead to invest in transient systems with variable outputs that require emitters coal and gas infrastructure anyway.

Yes Helen Haines - solar farms are just so "green".