I believe the report on wind’s supposed unreliability was overblown, if you will pardon a poor pun. Most utility power systems rely on a mix of resources to ensure reliability. The coal plant you mention may have been fired up to bail out the nuclear plant, but presumably it ran for only a short period of time and emitted a modest amount of greenhouse gases. The same is true for wind power. It matches up well with gas-fired power. A system in the UK, which has a generally excellent wind resource, should use relatively little fuel and produce low emissions with a mix of wind and gas.

Regards,
Thomas O. Gray
American Wind Energy Association
http://www.powerofwind.org
http://www.awea.org