Starting this blog with a rant is probably not very sensible but bear with me and I will try and balance rants with laughs. Of course, all my rants are based upon the information fed me by the media so don't hesitate to correct me if I am misinformed.
Last month was one of those rare occasions when I couldn't resist 'phoning in' to Julian Worricker of You & Yours, Radio 4 to put in my fourpenneth about sustainable energy and some joined up thinking.
I proposed that the 50,000 (recently increased to 100,000) new build homes a year, that this government has promised, should ALL include solar panels (photo voltaic) not only to provide their power needs but also to feedback into the National Grid. This would soon equate to a Nuclear Power Station and the mass production would substantially reduce the cost (and promised subsidies from the tax payer) of providing solar panels for existing homes.
. . . and, why isn't every new streetlight powered by solar power?
Surely a far better use of the experienced engineering skills we have in the country rather than subsidising the cost of manufacturing vehicles which consume more energy and produce more CO2 during manufacture than that saved by running a new car on tap water. How crazy are we, the tax payer, to pay £2,000 for people to scrap their 10 year old cars (like mine) in order to 'consume' a new car which (look out of your window) will spend 95% of it's time stationary? We should be incentivising drivers to 'keep and repair' their vehicles to reduce CO2 emissions and generate employment for mechanics and to 'share' vehicles.
It was interesting that Lord Hunt's excuse was that "Power Stations are designed to provide energy to individuals NOT to have energy provided by individuals". Sounds to me that the solution is in his response - solve the existing Power Station problem first.
Typical - I didn't get to page 72 of The Times until 10pm in my local to read: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article6943586.ece where Steve Holliday, CEO of National Grid, was extolling the virtues of Smart Meters and 'embedded generation' of energy from homes using solar panels feeding back into the grid to generate 15% of the country's electricity by 2020. NOW, if we just put that vision together with the government's 100,000 new builds we could, through joined up thinking, have the beginnings of a solution!!!
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