The UK government hates solar panels

Politicians, like the rest of us, are always being urged to “think big”. But, for me, the most interesting issue over the next week or so is going to be rather different: is Ed Miliband big enough to think small?

The question arises because our precocious young Energy and Climate Change Secretary is about to publish plans for a tenfold increase in renewable energy in Britain in little over a decade. The strategy will show whether Mr Miliband has more faith in the British people or in (and I fully realise that this is saying something) possibly the most incompetent and obscurantist collection of civil servants in Whitehall.

Let me explain. For decades, Britain has generated its energy from big installations: whopping great fossil fuel power stations that belch out carbon dioxide to add to global warming; mammoth nuclear power stations with a shocking record of construction delays and cost overruns; oversized wind farms, sometimes plonked down in wholly inappropriate places.

But it’s becoming clear that an excellent way to generate renewable energy is on a small – even household – scale, through rooftop solar panels. Despite the initial cost, the “fuel” is distributed free by nature, without the need for long pipes or power lines, and costs little or nothing to tap once the installation has been paid for. Families gain greater independence, and possibly some income from selling the surplus to the grid.
Last year, a report backed by Lord Mandelson’s Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (as was) concluded that, with proper encouragement, nine million British homes could be using such “microgeneration” by 2020, producing the same amount of electricity as five nuclear power stations. After just another decade, it went on, this could prevent the emission of as much carbon dioxide as taking all of the country’s buses and lorries off the road.

Sounds great? Not to the official ear. Civil servants in successive energy departments have always hated the idea of microgeneration, and done all they could to stifle it.

And why? Because it means someone else – worse, millions of someone elses – make decisions instead of them. And, as every mandarin believes, the man from Whitehall knows best.

In fact, as Daily Telegraph readers know, the man – and (let’s not be sexist) the woman – from Whitehall usually knows worst. After all, these people who trust you so little are the same bunch of dunderheads who pressed unrelentingly for the building of the mixed-oxide nuclear plant at Sellafield.

This white dinosaur, which has cost the taxpayer £1 billion, was supposed to produce 120 tons of nuclear fuel a year, but managed only a total of 6.3 tonnes between its opening in 2001 and April this year. (But never mind – there are proposals to build another one to make up for it.)

There might conceivably be some excuse for all this arrogance, if ordinary people took irrational, random decisions. But, of course, they don’t.

Other countries have easily devised measures that have ensured a rapid expansion of microgeneration. Germany guarantees generous “feed-in tariffs” for selling home-generated solar electricity to the grid; as a result, in 2007, 130,000 solar roofs were installed, compared with 270 in Britain.

Even in Bangladesh, more than 200,000 poor families have installed solar cells with the help of microcredit loans, bringing power to their villages for the first time and making money by selling it to their neighbours.
British ministers condemned Germany’s successful scheme as “a regulatory nightmare”. Instead, they reluctantly offered families grants to help towards the cost of installation – slashing them back to below incentive levels as soon as they started to be taken up. But now, in a U-turn, Mr Miliband is poised to introduce feed-in tariffs.

Will they be good and generous enough to work? Not, I’ll bet, if the officials can help it: they could well scupper microgeneration again.

A Tory minister would not let them do it: David Cameron understands the importance of this, and the self-reliance and individual initiative it encourages fits in well with his party’s values. But does perhaps the most promising Labour politician of the same generation get it, too? We’ll soon know.

Renewable energy is just the job

Is this an encouraging straw in a chill wind? In the South West, it seems, green firms and jobs are growing “at a dramatic rate”.

A new report – snappily entitled the Economic Contribution of the Renewable Energy and Energy Efficiency Sectors in the South West of England – surveyed 100 firms and found that their turnover had almost doubled over the last, recession-hit year, with the number of staff increasing by 40 per cent.

South Korea this week announced that it planned to create 1.8 million jobs over the next five years by developing solar power, hybrid cars and energy-efficient lighting. Barack Obama has promised to provide work for five million by investing in renewable energy, while David Cameron says: “Decarbonising Britain will help create hundreds of thousands of jobs.”

But will it work? Environmentalists brandish studies, like one from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that concludes that investing in green technologies employs nearly four times as many people as traditional investment. Sceptics repeatedly refer to a Spanish report that says that 2.2 jobs are lost for every new green one created.

In truth, no one knows. But green measures, like insulating buildings, are often particularly labour-intensive.
Renewable energy seems to provide at least three times as much work per dollar (or pound) as fossil fuels; recycling rubbish employs 10 times as many people as dumping it. So we may soon have a new term: “green-collar jobs”.

Green day? More like dirty brown
Sacré vert! Yesterday, as you may have noticed, was Green Britain Day. Except that it was actually organised by a nationalised French company, which boasts of being “one of the largest participants in the global coal market”.

The day aimed to urge us to “start living low-carbon lives” and to “start making changes” to “be part of a movement to reduce Britain’s carbon footprint”. Yet EDF proudly reports that it “imports around 30 million tons of physical coal a year”.

I don’t know if there is a French word for “greenwash”, but the firm might care to look it up.
Just to add injury to insult, EDF’s logo for the day – a green Union flag – is remarkably similar to one used by a genuinely green energy company, Ecotricity. Dale Vince, its chief executive, says he asked the French company to stop using it.

As a result, he received a phone call from an Andrew Brown, followed the same day by a message from a lawyer saying it would cost £6 million to do so. So he’s now taking the French giant to court.
Andrew Brown? Doesn’t that ring a bell? Yes, it’s the Prime Minister’s brother – the First Sibling, we might call him – who just happens to be EDF’s PR chief.

So here’s an idea for the company. Why doesn’t it “start making changes now” by getting out of coal, the world’s dirtiest fuel?

Otherwise, it could try colouring the flag Brown.

Source - Telegraph