Sir – Laurence Haar’s attacks on green energy (Green energy will cost us all, October 10) are completely unfounded. Gas prices have risen recently by eight per cent.

This has nothing to do with ‘green subsidies’ which are a levy on energy company profits to assist poorer households improve their energy efficiency and reduce their bills. What is wrong with that?

Governments around the world are promoting the development of renewable energy and seeking to transform their energy infrastructure away from dependence on fossil fuels.

This is because we have already experienced a 1C rise in global temperatures and if we exceed 2C the risks of disruption of the global climate and ability of human beings to survive and thrive on the planet are huge.

Every nation on earth has signed up to that. What this means is that we have to stop using fossil fuels like coal and gas to generate electricity pretty quickly. Yes, there are costs to making a transition to a low-carbon economy, but nothing as the Stern Report set out some years ago, to the costs of not making that transition.

What Dr Haar wilfully ignores is that fossil fuels and nuclear power are heavily subsidised and have been for decades.

For example, only this year George Osborne announced that ‘fracking’ companies would receive tax allowances for developing gas fields and would be able to offset expenditure on exploration against tax for ten years. The next tax avoidance scandal, I think.

By comparison, the subsidy provided for renewable energy is absolutely tiny. Dr Haar needs to recognise that climate change is happening, that an energy transformation is under way and that coal and gas-fired power stations are the past, not the future.

Martin Stott, Oxford