Energy revolution is hard on King Coal YOU appear to have found in Lancing, Sussex, the answer to all our prayers - an energy-from-waste plant that is "creating energy with virtually no carbon emissions", according to the interviewee ("Hope and a skip to make electricity", December 19). as one tonne of cellulose produces about 1.63 tonnes of carbon dioxide when burnt, someone must be turning a blind eye.  This also seems to have been the case with the government calling time on the free-market model for the electricity industry ("Low carbon comes at a high price", same issue) and continuing to subsidise energy from waste, tree burning, biomass burning and gas burning, all of which produce carbon dioxide.  Yet carbon dioxide from dear old coal, without which we would be truly in a mess, is judged dirty, does not receive assistance and must close down. How ridiculous and unrealistic we have become.  The artificial upward manipulation of energy prices is the last thing we need to get our economy back on track. Subsidising caveman burning practices is lunacy.  Michael Hill Escrick, North Yorkshire