[tt] Independent: Greener power to the people: the real energy alternative?

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Greener power to the people: the real energy alternative?
http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/greener-power-to-the-people-the-real-energy-alternative-837821.html 
8.6.1

[Thanks to Sarah for this, who notes: "Solar panels on British houses could replace five nuclear power plants and 
reduce CO2 emissions as much as taking all truck and cars off British 
roads by 2030."]

British householders can produce their own energy, but official
policy has led to Britain lagging behind the rest of Europe.
Geoffrey Lean reports


Ministers could avoid building nuclear reactors by encouraging
families to fit solar panels and other renewable energy equipment to
their homes, a startling official report concludes.

The government-backed report, to be published tomorrow, says that,
with changed policies, the number of British homes producing their
own clean energy could multiply to one million - about one in every
three - within 12 years.

These would produce enough power to replace five large nuclear power
stations, tellingly at about the same time as the first of the
much-touted new generation of reactors is likely to come on stream.

And, it adds, by 2030, such "microgeneration" would save the same
amount of emissions of carbon dioxide - the main cause of global
warming - as taking all Britain's lorries and buses off the road.

The conclusions of the report - approved and partly financed by the
Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (DBERR) -
sharply contrast with initiatives hurriedly launched by Gordon Brown
last week in reaction to the lorry drivers' fuel-price protests.

In his most pro-nuclear announcement to date, the Prime Minister
indicated that he wanted greatly to increase the number of atomic
power stations to be built in Britain. And he met oil executives in
Scotland to urge them to pump more of the black gold from the North
Sea's fast-declining fields - even though his own energy minister,
Malcolm Wicks, admitted that this would do nothing to reduce the
price of fuel.

Even more embarrassingly for the embattled Mr Brown, the report
closely mirrors policies announced by the Conservative Party six
months ago to start "a decentralised energy revolution" by "enabling
every small business, every local school, every local hospital, and
every household in the country to generate electricity".

Yesterday Peter Ainsworth, the shadow Environment Secretary, said:
"We have found that there are huge economic, social and
environmental gains to be made by doing this. It is good that, at
last, part of the Government seems belatedly to be coming to the
same conclusion, and we can only hope that the Prime Minister can
rise above his panic-stricken clutching at old technologies and
grasp the opportunities microgeneration offers for clean and more
secure energy supplies."

The 130-page report, due to be launched by Mr Wicks, has been
produced by a consultancy, Element Energy, after a wide-ranging
survey of public attitudes on installing household renewable energy
systems. It has been financed, and steered by, 14 official and other
bodies including DBERR, the official Energy Savings Trust, five
regional development agencies, British Gas, the Micropower Council
and the Ashden Trust.

The department's approval marks something of a revolution in itself,
since its predecessor, the Department of Trade and Industry, was for
decades hostile to renewable energy and microgeneration. Its
mandarins hated the thought of allowing millions of ordinary people
to affect energy supplies by generating their own heat and power.

As a result, Britain is almost bottom of the European league for
exploiting renewables - above only Luxembourg and Malta - despite
having the best resources in the entire continent. Though ministers
claim their efforts have been "highly successful" in boosting these
clean sources of energy, they now account for only about 4 per cent
of electricity - compared, for example, with 14 per cent in Germany.

Ministers also boast that 100,000 British homes now have
microgeneration, mainly solar thermal panels that heat water - but
in Germany they adorn more than a million roofs.

Last year just 270 solar photovoltaic panels, which produce
electricity, were put on Britain's homes, compared with 130,000 in
Germany. At this rate, David Orr, chief executive of the National
Housing Federation told MPs last month, it would take the UK 1,500
years to equal the number Germany has. Britain's only manufacturer
of the panels, Sharp, calculates that less than a week of its
year-round production actually gets installed in this country, with
the rest exported to the continent.

The new report shows that, unlike in Germany, government incentives
to householders fail to persuade them to invest in renewable energy.
It concludes that they are daunted by the high initial cost of
buying and installing them and want to see returns within three
years.

The Government gives grants to help with the initial costs, but
these are too small and too restricted to be effective. Indeed,
ministers deliberately cut them back at the very point when they
looked as if they were inspiring a rooftop revolution.

When first launched two years ago, the grants - which, for example
offered up to £7,500 to install photovoltaic panels - were an
instant hit. Payments soared to £1.4m in November 2006 alone,
exceeding expectations more than four times over. But instead of
welcoming it, ministers determined to dampen down the soaring
demand. First they rationed payments to just £500,000 a month - with
the result that, in February 2007, this entire allocation was used
up in just two hours.

When this was ridiculed, they suspended the scheme altogether,
relaunching it with the grant for photovoltaic panels slashed by
two-thirds, and the one for wind turbines cut in half. Demand duly
slumped.

For the past year, payments have been running at just £200,000 a
month, far beneath the original target. But in April ministers
rejected pleas from environmentalists and the renewable energy
industry to increase the grants. Statistics to be released tomorrow
will show that, partly as a result, only 18,000 new microgeneration
installations have been completed over the past four years.

The new report instead suggests that Britain adopt the same approach
as has been successful in Germany, which pays householders for
feeding the electricity they produce from microgeneration into the
national grid; the rate of these "feed-in tariffs" for photovoltaic
panels is especially generous, fuelling their rapid expansion. At
least 15 other European countries have also adopted them.

Last November, Gordon Brown appeared to back them, indicating that
it should be "made easier for people to generate their own energy
through microgeneration, and sell it on to the grid". But little has
happened since, with ministers promising only to "look" at feed-in
tariffs. They failed to include them in the Government's Energy
Bill, sparking the biggest rebellion of Mr Brown's premiership, when
33 Labour MPs last month defied the whips.

A staggering 278 MPs have now signed an early-day motion calling on
the Government to adopt them. Yet, last Wednesday, speaking for the
Government in a House of Lords debate, Lord Jones, a junior DBERR
minister, called feed-in tariffs "a regulatory nightmare and
extremely expensive". He added: "If we were to change now we would
destroy the consistency and stability that business craves and
private sector investors need."

The report also gives a fair wind to a proposal by the Micropower
Council to set statutory targets for household renewables, to give
the industry the certainty it needs to expand.

The confusion in Government over micropower echoes the chaos of its
entire energy policy on display last week. Ministers panicked at the
fuel price protests, which blocked the A40 on Wednesday, just as
they did seven years ago when larger protests paralysed the country.

Then Gordon Brown, as Chancellor, rapidly backed away from green
taxes, despite having promised to put "the environment at the core
of the Government's objectives for the tax system". Last week he and
his ministers were scrambling over themselves to react to the new
protests, contradicting each other over whether they would perform
U-turns over plans to raise fuel duty by 2p, and increase road tax
disproportionately on bigger cars.

The Prime Minister also increased his backing for nuclear power.
Previously he had only suggested that new reactors should be built
to in place of old ones as they were closed down. But on Wednesday
he said he would be "more ambitious", adding: "We are pretty clear
that we will have to do more than simply replace existing nuclear
capacity in Britain."

The report offers a very different future, as do the Tories, who see
microgeneration as central to their philosophy of redirecting power
to individuals. David Cameron sees "decentralised energy" as "a key
part of our political vision, energy for the post-bureaucratic age".
He believes microgeneration could make Britain, and individual
communities, "self-sufficient in energy".

Opinion

"There are huge economic, social and environmental gains to be made
by doing this"

Peter Ainsworth, Shadow Environment Secretary

"We will have to do more than simply replace existing nuclear
capability. We will be more ambitious"

Gordon Brown, Prime Minister

"A large proportion of homes in the UK could be generating their own
energy, saving tons of emissions"

Philip Sellwood, Chief executive, Energy Saving Trust

"We are not going to make any progress in the fight against climate
change if we have to rely on piecemeal initiatives"

Steve Webb, Lib Dem environment spokesman

"Thirty-five per cent of our maximum demand for electricity should
come from nuclear. We have plenty of uranium"

Sir David King, Former chief scientific adviser

"This levelling of energy demand will make it possible for nuclear
power to supply virtually all of our energy needs"

John Ritch Director general, World Nuclear Assoc