Blog Does wind power actually lower emissions, and will having wind on the grid cost considerably more than if the UK well and truly dashed for gas? Skeptic thinktank the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)'s report ' Why is Wind Power So Expensive? ' has introduced these talking points into the energy debate, and they're often uncritically repeated by wind opponents. This started a backlash in the energy world - we take a look at the counter arguments. Among the claims is the argument that scaling up the UK's wind power capacity, with gas as backup, would cost much more, and result in more carbon dioxide emissions, than if the country invested in new gas plant. "The exchange rate is about one for one: a megawatt hour of wind typically meant the UK grid used one less megawatt hour of gas-derived electricity." This means that when the wind is blowing the grid needs less backup from gas plant, not more, as Hughes claims, - so overall emissions go down. They estimate that UK wind farms currently save about 6.1 million tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions over the course of a year  - much the same as RenewableUK has estimated . This is about 4 per cent of the UK's emissions from electricity. This prompted Goodall to post an analysis of this variation . He showed that the National Grid can cope with much more rapid swings in supply and demand than will ever be likely with the UK's current wind