text: At least the Government admits for the first time that the wind doesn?t always blow; so it proposes a Capacity Mechanism to subsidise the building of dozens of gas-fired power stations, to be kept running all the time, emitting CO2, just to provide instant back-up for when the wind drops. More than once on these recent cold, windless days, the contribution of wind to our electricity needs has been as low as 0.1 per cent ? so the back-up to all those turbines will cost billions more, doing much to negate any CO2 savings from the turbines when they work.