MEDIA coverage might have led you to think that wind power and offshore wind in particular is an established, universally accepted and low-risk technology. However, nothing could be further from the truth.

After decades of subsidy, amounting to tens of billions of pounds in the UK alone, it is still extremely expensive and dependent on distorted markets and income support. Cautious analysts are aware of this and regard investment in wind not as a technology venture but a high-stakes gamble on continued policy support. Without the subsidies and market coercions it makes no sense.

In my view this is correct. The physics of wind tells us that this energy flow is of such poor thermodynamic quality that it can never be cheap in comparison with nuclear or fossil fuels. And this is true even when the impacts of climate change arising from fossil fuels are taken into account.

This theoretical perspective is confirmed by decades of evidence reporting that wind power infrastructure is expensive to build, operate and to maintain, and that the uncontrollable nature of the output requires otherwise needless grid expansion and dramatically increases system-management costs.

Consequently, the costs to consumers are extremely high and fail all rational cost-benefit tests as a climate policy. The cure is worse than the disease. Therefore, wind has no long-term future, and policies supporting it are an error that will be corrected sooner or later.

For large economies, such as the UK or Germany, the effects of the mistaken wind-power adventure will be serious, implying a loss of human welfare and geopolitical disadvantage. This may even be historically significant, ceding global pre-eminence to economies such as that of China which have dressed the window with renewables but have wisely planned to generate wealth from fossil fuels in the short and medium term as a prelude to future use of nuclear for both electricity and high-temperature industrial heat.

Bad though this is, the major European economies should be able to recover from their mistakes, since they have large power-generation portfolios that are still broadly based. Far too many of our eggs are in one basket – wind – but not all of them are. The capital write-downs as wind is abandoned will be terrible but bearable.

However, smaller economies and island systems, such as that of Jersey, might easily be more severely affected if they invest in or come to rely on wind generation and then have to retreat in distress. The costs will be politically crippling, and recovery near impossible without external assistance, implying a loss of independence.

Wind power is a game for large, rich countries that can afford high risks and expensive gestures. Jersey is probably not such a country, and, in my view, should keep its distance both financially and physically from any wind project proposed in its waters.

It seems to me that the risk (hazard x probability) of investment or entanglement in the commercial operations of a wind farm that is very likely to be a shortlived and uneconomic project are simply too great for the Island. But that is for you to decide.

I realise that this description of the situation will be surprising to many. The wind industry and its proponents insist that their costs are falling, and that this technology is an opportunity not to be missed.

They point to the UK’s vast commitments to offshore wind, for example.

Indeed, only a few years ago, Westminster tube station was covered, almost wall to wall, with posters claiming that wind’s costs had fallen by about 75% in a few years, with extremely low bids being made in auctions for subsidy contracts.

I simply didn’t believe those extraordinary claims about cost reduction, partly because of theoretical arguments derived from the physics of wind, and partly because of the history of heavy engineering, which is quite different from that of electronics, and which has never exhibited such a sharp decline in costs. But empirical evidence relating to capital and to operational costs was needed to provide a conclusive evaluation of the wind industry claims.

Fortunately, audited financial statements for wind farm companies are available in the public domain, and in work published by the UK charity that I direct, Renewable Energy Foundation, the economist Professor Gordon Hughes, of the University of Edinburgh, presented an econometric analysis of the trends in capex (capital expenditure) and opex (operational expenditure) evident over time for several hundred wind farms. This work is freely downloadable from the REF website (ref.org.uk).

What Prof Hughes found was that capex had not fallen very significantly, and that opex, the cost of running and maintaining wind turbines at sea, not only rose significantly as the wind turbines aged, but that newer wind farms seemed to have higher operational costs than older ones, perhaps because they were much larger and in deeper water.

These considerations around opex are of particular importance since they suggest that the economic lifetime of the schemes would be much shorter than expected, with annual income failing to cover annual costs within a relatively short period of time.

The medium-term prospects for the UK’s offshore wind fleet do not seem likely to be good without further government subsidies, which may not be forthcoming.

When considering a wind proposal for Jersey, this actual real-world experience should be your first port of call. The negative implications of involvement in such projects, even at one remove through a power offtake agreement, for example, are of such significance that sentiment and wishful thinking must be avoided.

A cool-headed appraisal of the realities of wind power and the contrasting merits of the alternatives, such as renewing the supply contract with France and refreshing the existing conventional generation fleet, is essential. In my view, the conclusion of that review would not be positive for wind power. But, again, that is for you to decide.

•The JEP’s focus on the wind farm debate continues in Monday’s edition.

•Dr John Constable is a UK energy analyst and director of the charity Renewable Energy Foundation (ref.org.uk).