Let’s be clear here – the people in Scotland have a vision for future Renewable Energy, and so do many people in Wales and Ireland, but it appears English governance listens to fuddy duddy landowners too readily, and remains wedded to the fossil fuel industry and major construction projects like nuclear power, and carbon capture and storage.

It really is of no use putting off investment in truly sustainable and renewable power and gas. There are only two paths we can take in the next few decades, and their destination is the same.

Here’s how it goes. Path A will take the United Kingdom into continued dodgy skirmishes in the Middle East and North Africa. Oil production will dance like a man with a stubbed toe, but then show its true gradient of decline. Once everybody gets over the panic of the impending lack of vehicle fuel, and the failure of alternatives like algal biodiesel, and the impacts of a vastly contracted liquid fuel supply on globalised trade, then we shall move on to the second phase – the exploitation of gas. At first, it will be Natural Gas. But that too will decline. And then it will be truly natural gases. As gas is exploited for vehicles, electricity will have to come from coal. But coal, too, is suffering a precipitous decline. So renewable energy will be our salvation. By the year 2100, the world will run on renewable electricity and renewable gas, or not at all.

Meanwhile we will have had wars, rumours of wars, and just plain bomb-dropping, and lots of ancient civilisations will have bit the uranium-laced dust, and Scotland will have long since made a break for economic and political freedom. And we will have locked ourselves into dangerous climate change through our wanton burning of fossil fuels.

Path B – the logical long-term option and where we’re headed anyway – is to bypass climate change, bypass warfare and bypass idiocy and go straight to renewables.

But can the English Government work this out ? Can they see beyond their Cost Benefit Analyses and their short-termism and the calls to cut regulation and targets ? Can they imagine what life will be like in 30 years – and can they be made to be accountable to the future citizens of this country ?

We need to stimulate the development of renewable energy in the United Kingdom. It will take tax breaks, direct funding, subsidies. The Feed-in Tariff for solar power is essential in the current economic environment, to build a long-lasting electricity generation asset. If the British Government truly takes the prosperity of this country seriously, they need to plan for a significant deployment of renewable energy. We don’t know what the price of fossil fuels will be in five years time, ten years time. But we know that sunshine will always be free.

Image Credit : Intelligence Squared

Yes, he’s right that solar photovoltaic systems are being incentivised more than other micro-generation, but there are several good reasons for that. For a first, the unit price of an adequate rooftop solar power system is in the region of the price of a car.

Most people use finance schemes to purchase cars, with monthly charges for example.

Similar schemes are not available for solar PV, where you have to borrow the whole amount for the system up-front – or take it from a savings account if you’re lucky enough to have one.

It is the sheer size of the cost of home solar that means that people won’t do it without subsidy. The one overriding concern of people when I ask them about what green energy they could consider buying, is the size of the initial outgoings.

People seem to be prepared to spend up to around £600 to £1,200, but no more. So, most people wouldn’t even consider a heat pump (cost somewhere in the region of £3,000 to £5,000), micro co-generation (Stirling engine Combined Heat and Power unit, coming in at around £4,500) or micro-wind turbine (installation around £3,500 depending on location).

Energy bill customers would however consider insulation and draught management, and maybe even stretch to a wood-burning stove – although the supply chain for the fuel would need to be good, and some urban installations are quite costly owing to smoke regulations.

However, there is a desperate need for more indigenous power generation in Britain. This is why solar electric on peoples’ homes, and community solar power schemes, are so important.

George Monbiot and others scorn solar power because they say that the generation of power does not match the demand for power. Maximum solar generation, they say, is in the summer, when the sun is high in the sky for long periods – but this does not match the need for power in the depths of winter at night.

There are two significant reasons why George Monbiot should think again.

1. Future summer power consumption

George Monbiot, like myself, accepts the science of global warming and climate change. Disturbances in the general climatic conditions where we all live will call for strong adaptational measures.

In London, where I live, there are regular warnings about the need to increase the tree cover as weather protection in both summer and winter – in summer for shade and local cooling, and in winter for protection against flooding and excessive rainfall. Trees need open, permeable ground around them, which can soak up excess surface water; and the tree canopies themselves can protect people from downpours.

In the summer or para-summer in what was formerly Spring and Autumn, there may be weeks of excessive heat. Until now, the UK has not had extensive air conditioning in buildings, unlike the United States of America. We are in “Cool Poverty”, not “Fuel Poverty”, during a heatwave. However, summer cooling will become increasingly necessary, especially in public buildings such as schools and hospitals which have been poorly constructed through contracts made under the Private Finance Initiative. The more rooftop solar there is, the better, as when the summer highs arrive, the solar power will be there to cool us down.

2. Energy storage for winter

The natural world makes use of summer conditions to soak up as much energy as possible. Plants and trees burgeon during the warm months. We need to act like the plants and soak up energy in summer to use during winter. Electricity is not something that can be stored easily – it needs to be used to do something that can be stored easily. Something that is ready to give energy back when we need it when our other renewable energies are less powerful – when the sun is not shining and the wind is not blowing and the waves are not churning.

We need to use the excess generation in summer to make energy for winter. Unused summer solar power should be used to make renewable gas; easy to store, and quick to respond to demand in winter.

Solar power can make energy for winter. That is why we need more rooftop solar.

You have to be prepared to dodge flying nuclear trolls, but apart from that you too can contribute, as long as you have an in-depth knowledge of the price of everything in the UK electricity generation network.

Dear XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX,

Do you think it’s possible that nobody is immune to emotional reactions to the fate of the solar power industry ? For example, you say, “I find it most frustrating that others do not even attempt to contest the factual statements or assertions I make on the basis of evidence, but simply revert to the emotive and subjective.” And yet in the very preceding paragraph you say, “…the religious diatribe of the PV industry”, which some could validly claim is an emotive and subjective statement.

You seem to be quite married to the idea that the sole focus of assessing the solar PV industry should be the differential pricing between installed cost and module cost. I’m not going to argue numbers with you, but let’s take a look at money questions, if that is your sole concern.

You do not appear to take into account peripheral costs, such as the cost of the electronics necessary to hook a home solar system into the grid, nor the employment costs, nor practical details such as the cost of scaffolding.

More importantly you do not appear to have a recognition of the “externalities” – the costs to the whole electricity network of centralised generation and transmission losses. Can you offer an estimate of the value of unloading the local area of a grid in the neighbourhood of the solar PV system ? Can you offer an estimate of the added efficiency of having some local, distributed generation, so that the high voltage network does not have to transform power down to the local area ? Have you an idea of the carbon displacement value from having zero-emissions generation in the local grids ?

XXXXXXXXX XXXXXXXXXX mentioned that there needs to be additional grid management and reconfiguring of cabling if small scale solar generation is taking place on a wide scale. But how does the cost of that compare to having to put up major new cabling for bringing new wind power south to England from Scotland ?

There are people who have looked at these questions of costings. Over the last few years I have read a few things on this, but the references are not uppermost in my mind, sorry to say.

The electricity generation industry are showing extreme reluctance over new investments – partly due to fluctuations in Government policy, partly due to continued risks from carbon pricing being imposed (which I am against), partly due to the volatility in the global energy commodity markets, partly due to stress from the economic volatility and the lack of credit.

True more than ever before is the pragmatic fact that all new energy deployment will require state subsidy.

In the face of all this nothing-doing, the two things that have continued to accelerate have been wind power and micro-solar.

Greg Barker MP keeps uttering “867 million” as if that’s a larger number than the several billion committed to Carbon Capture and Storage and new nuclear subsidies. We won’t see any real benefits from CCS or nuclear for at least a decade. Why should we spend money now on these things ? If you look at it carefully, you can see that the “867 million” in the Feed-in Tariff budget is producing more real benefits in the current moment than any of the other proposed reforms of the electricity “market”.

I reckon he should be allowed to double the feed in tariff budget. Naturally, he should start slowly ramping down the tariff amounts guaranteed to new solar PV installations. It makes sense as the module prices are reducing (although other costs are not). It doesn’t make sense to kill the industry off with this sudden, early 50% reduction in state support.

I think that rooftop solar has to be part of the “energy mix”, and that we cannot afford nuclear power and carbon captured-coal (or CCS in general).

I have taken an approach with my individual energy use that matches the way I feel my country should behave. I have taken actions to reduce my personal energy use and increase the amount of renewable energy that I use, and hopefully, I shall have some microsolar very soon, despite Greg Barker MP’s unwise intervention in the functioning of the industry. If it all goes according to plan I will be using very little gas and exporting electricity on a net annual basis. That will make me one of the nation’s electricity generators – and decentralised power will be working.

For the record I am neither a member of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth or the Green Party and I don’t own any shares in the solar power industry.

Regards,

Detecting that I was speaking with a native French-speaker, I slipped into my rather unpracticed second language to explain that I could not countenance working with the militaries, because I disagree with their strategy of repeated aggression.

Whoops, there goes another great opportunity to make a huge pile of cash, contracting for warmongers ! Sometimes you just have to kiss a career goodbye. IT consultancy has many ethical pitfalls. Time to reinvent myself.

I’ve been “back to school” for the second university degree, and now I’m supposed to submit myself to the “third degree” – go out and get me a job. The paucity of available positions due to the poor economic climate notwithstanding, the possibility of ending up in an unsuitable role fills me with dread. One of these days I might try to write about my experiences of having to endure several kinds of abuse whilst engaged in paid employment : suffice it to say, workplace inhumanity can be unbearable, some people don’t know what ethical behaviour means, and Human Resources departments always take sides, especially with vindictive, manipulative, micro-managers. I know what it’s like to be powerless.

I’m an open, honest, well-meaning person, and I’m quite sociable, unless I’m trying to focus on something complicated, when I need to be left alone. I like informality and equality, enjoy being able to offer pragmatic solutions, good advice and insight; am capable of managing difficult situations and negotiating progress in a spirit of co-operation. I can work under some stress, as long as it isn’t every day, or in a hostile environment; and I can do good research and detailed work, for example in computer systems programming. I can work with a wide variety of people, as long as they’re minded to be constructive. I like to train people to do the best they can, and do better than before, and I like to build teams that are mutually supportive. Simple is good. Direct is best. I try to create efficiency, I can facilitate business process, manage change and I’m always trying to work myself out of a job.

Unfortunately, there are some people out there who do not understand me, who somehow see me as a threat, and who actively campaign against my aims and methods, sometimes by attempting to isolate me. It slowly dawns on me – a look here, a word there, a conversation I’m not party to. I get the sensation of alienation. I can look in a person’s face and see the antipathy. I don’t know why, but I know what. People can be cruel and ruthless. You cannot expect easy co-operation, especially in a hierarchy, where my competencies always seem to challenge the power base. I really don’t want to put myself through that again. I shouldn’t have to undergo torture in order to earn a living. Rejection, I can handle – what I fear is dejection.

“What you need to do”, says my relative, “is take a job for another ten years or so. A good solid career. You should take a role in the field you have studied.” I reply with, “The trouble is, I now know enough about a great number of organisations I couldn’t possibly bring myself to work for.” My assessment, of course, puts me in the category of judgmental, and makes me fairly unemployable. I’m pretty certain that even those organisations who have a similar approach to mine wouldn’t want to work with me.

Another relative suggests I need to do something practical, says that I can’t spend all my life thinking. There’s only so many roles for thinkers. There’s only so much space for intellectual inquiry. Yes, that’s true. We’ve had enough thinking. The economists told us to price carbon. Everybody else is resisting a price on carbon. High carbon emitters continually lobby against being penalised. It will never work. The economists told us to trade carbon. That has been spectacularly unsuccessful in a number of ways, including the failure to create verifiable, sustainable carbon credits; and the fraud and theft of carbon credits.

The economists told us to price pollution, to make the polluters pay. And the polluters end up passing the costs along the value chain to the end consumers. They don’t stop polluting, they just make their consumers forfeit.

The technologists from the oil and gas industry told us to do things like Carbon Capture and Storage, and other geoengineering. Watch how the number of carbon capture projects grows ! The pace is slower than a drugged snail’s. Why ? Entropy, man. It’s always going to be cheaper to prevent carbon emissions in the first place than re-capture the carbon from the air. And the price of re-capture can be expected to be stellar – it’s all in the chemistry. The only thing that got captured was your intelligence. You were captured by the idea and it failed you.

The policymakers keep blaming the consumer, and telling us all we will enjoy lowering our energy use. The citizens are fighting back, by paying no attention at all to the messaging of restraint; and campaigning against high energy prices.

Nope, I can’t make a career working for an environmental organisation, as life would be defined completely by negatives : antagonism is not an attitude I can keep up. Environmentalists keep making unreasonable, unfeasible demands. They demand change, but don’t offer a pathway to a positive future. It seems that, for the most part, environmentalists can achieve nothing of note. I’m inclined to think that those who control the purse strings control the changes that have to be made – the insurers, the investors, the highly capitalised companies.

But I don’t want to work for a multinational, transnational corporation. Their prime directive is to make a profit to satisfy the demands of their shareholders. They don’t care about carbon unless it is to take care of their bottom line. I could never work for a fossil fuel oil and gas company, even if they have an “alternative energy” section, because they are outright compromised, and are carrying huge carbon liabilities. I’m not sure if there are any ethical finance or banking outfits that I could fit into. I don’t know if there are any renewable energy technology corporations that would be prepared to hire me.

I am an awkward one. Don’t hire me. You’ll only want to fire me. Don’t give me any money to perform a function – there’s nothing I can achieve if people aren’t prepared to work with me. Am I playing hard to get ? Giving the wrong impression ? Once again, I have to strike out on my own. I rather get the idea I will need to create my own job. What is worthwhile doing ?

I’ve been studying the management of climate change, a sort of hybrid discipline between business management studies and climate change policy – taking in climate change science and developments in energy. We’ve learned about carbon management, carbon pricing in all its forms, and the rocky seas of energy policy. We’ve heard that technology and innovation can solve the problem. We’ve heard that renewable energy can save the day. We’ve been exposed to the diversity of proposals for climate change mitigation and adaptation, and the institutions, organisations and government departments that are tasked with handling climate change.

There are things that need to be done : the full weight of the world’s production capability and purchasing power needs to be directed towards sustainable and renewable energy, energy conservation, universal building insulation, joined up systems of low carbon transportation, low carbon agriculture, low carbon economic development… All new investment should be directed towards creating low carbon energy assets, energy efficiency and energy conservation.

There are ways to make things happen. You do something yourself. You ask somebody else to do it. You pay somebody to perform a function. You create obligations, and a system of accountability. If you’re the Governor of Texas and you’re desperate for rainfall to break the long, hot drought, you beseech the heavens for divine intervention. You wait for the passage of time and the unfolding of events to whisper the suggestion of change…

And then there’s the power of influence. It’s a constant surprise – the genuinely influential don’t realise how hard it is for others to emulate their role. There are in fact very few people who can influence for the better.

I don’t want to have influence. I don’t want to be famous for bending minds. I don’t want to be admired for being seductively convincing. What I offer is the truth as I see it – flat and un-adorned. However, honesty is not lucrative; and pragmatism doesn’t sell. People don’t seem to like straight talking or plain speaking.

I don’t have influence, but I don’t want influence. I don’t want to be someone that other people revere and follow. I don’t want to be a leader. I just want to put the facts and figures and methods out there for others to recognise – to witness to inevitable changes, and our changing responsibilities and accountabilities.

I don’t have power. I don’t want power. I am without artifice. I don’t want to be a sales person or be forced to fabricate with public relations. I’m not trying to prove anything – I’m just trying to show it.

People say I should take employment in order to pursue my goals and aims. I don’t know if there is any form of employment, currently, that would allow me to pursue my goals and aims. I cannot think of any role that anyone would want filled that would grant me the kind of authority I would need to pursue my goals and aims. And anyway, I don’t want to offer a service of labour to a paternalistic organisation in exchange for some kind of accredited authority; permission to get done what needs to be done.

I cannot do anything about the appallingly bad media coverage of climate change science, the crisis in energy and policy. There are not enough hours in the day to effectively counter their poorly-constructed and often unfactual narratives. I don’t have the energy to go against all this stupidity and propaganda. The channels of mass communication lack the necessary staff with the skillsets to relate the full scale of climate change to their communities of audiences. I disagree with almost all economists and many of the industrial corporations about how to handle climate change. I cannot completely align myself with any single political party or grouping – the Members of Parliament and many civil servants struggle with science and technology. They are mostly non-scientists, non-engineers.

I often find myself considering a company or an organisation and thinking, “I can’t work for these people. They’ll have me doing something useless”, or “I can’t work with these people. Their pitch is all blather. Their intellectual framework is tilted, on weak foundations, and liable to fracture.” I cannot live a lie. I cannot live with a lie.

I have adopted a position of powerlessness, but it is problematic. My communication skills are constrained by my repudiation of power.

I cannot produce anything much by communicating, as I don’t want you to believe without evidence and knowledge, and I don’t need you to agree with me just because I say something. You will probably dismiss my thoughts on the basis of my position, and I can’t make the message stick; but then, in a democracy of thought, I shouldn’t force you to accept anything I say.

I don’t want to convert you, recruit you, make you change your mind. But somebody has to say these things – give us all the opportunity to reflect and maybe come to our senses.

What should be said. What has to happen.

All I can do is keep saying what needs to be said and keep saying what has to happen, what will happen; whilst critiquing all the confusion, distortion and disinformation. That’s all I can do. I’m not very successful at communicating these things, but it’s still all I can do. All I can do is not enough. But it’s all I can do.

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