I AM writing in response to the article "Wind farm developer taken to task over exaggerated claims" and the letter from Roland Smith "Sustainable Crediton should abandon this folly now" both appearing in the October 24 issue of the Courier. Firstly, in his statement, within the wind farm article, Roland Smith has made the same mistake he accuses the renewables industry of making by misleading the readers of the Courier. In stating that 4.5MW, approximately one quarter of the 18MW capacity, is a trivially small amount of electricity, he has implied that only a trivial number of homes would have their annual average energy needs met. In fact the Advertising Standards Authority adjudication makes it clear that the Den Brook wind farm could provide 9,507 homes which use the UK average electricity consumption of 4,229 KWH, not an insignificant amount of electricity! Secondly, with respect to his letter, Mr Smith was well aware that 15 minutes of the recent Sustainable Crediton meeting was devoted to debating the morality of using feed in tariff (FIT) subsidies to finance the renewable energy project and that a full 30 minutes was spent discussing, in a work group, all the points in his letter concerning renewable technologies. He also knew that Sustainable Crediton had decided to limit its initial project to installing solar photovoltaic panels on the roofs of industrial or school or community buildings, making all his comments on wind turbines and anaerobic digesters unnecessary.  He even agrees that solar panels should go on roof tops. The FIT subsidies that finance the proposed project amount to £7 per annum in the average annual electricity bill, an amount that people in fuel poverty may struggle to pay. Irrespective of whether or not the project goes ahead, Crediton bill payers will continue to pay £7 pa in their bills to subsidise the UK small scale renewables FIT scheme. The benefits from the Sustainable Crediton scheme to the local economy include the benefit of a community fund which could be used to alleviate fuel poverty. One of the other working groups at the meeting explored the issues of fuel poverty and energy efficiency. If 10 per cent of bill payers in Crediton are affected by fuel poverty, say 1,000 bill payers, the community fund would have to be a minimum of £7,000 to completely offset the FIT subsidy for those bill payers in fuel poverty. I would hope that the community fund could achieve that level. An indicative vote was taken at the meeting as to whether or not the feasibility study should continue. The vote was unanimous for the project to continue. Charles Mossman Sustainable Crediton Energy Group Co-ordinator Well Cottage Cheriton Fitzpaine