"Windmills! Oh no. No way of doing it. You can cover the whole country with the blasted things, millions of them. Waste of time."

He's unfairly dismissive of wind. It wouldn't take millions of turbines to power the fixed stuff in the UK. The order of magnitude would be around one hundred thousands 5MW turbines and 50,000 sq km of dual-use land - about a 5th of the country or it has to be off-shore - more expensive per pop but better capacity factor. And of course, it'd require a beefed-up grid and back-up generation.

And no, the UK is not going to become a rescue raft for the rest of Europe. Rather for Bangladesh.

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I'm not surprised by his tone. If I were one of those old scientific fogeys who spent their life actually looking the problem, at the facts, screaming from roof tops and getting no attention, I'd be bitter and discouraged from all sides. Fuck, Edward Teller, aka Dr Strangelove himself, was talking about that in the late 50s, that fossil fuels would bury us (but the guy had so many crazy ideas per minute, he was bound to be right about something). So, with all the righteous holier-than-thou wankery and greenwashing going on, no surprise if he's dismissive.