Solar PV panels – are they still worth it?

The benefits of solar energy are obvious – free sunlight can cut your electricity bills, you can be paid for the electricity you generate (even if you use it) and you can sell surplus electricity back to the grid. Most importantly perhaps is that it is green and no harmful greenhouse gases will be released into the atmosphere during energy production.

Yet do the recent government cuts in the feed-in tariff negate any of the above benefits? The feed-in tariff for solar PV panels will reduce again from 1st November, by 0.54 pence / kW. In this blog, we will look at the pros and cons of installing solar panels on your house and ask – is it still worth it?

Solar PV installation costs

The cost of installing a solar PV system has dropped significantly over the last year – in May this year a typical house requiring a 3kWh system would be set back £7,700. It is now possible, 5 months down the line, to get the same system for under £6,000.

Already this year we have seen the FIT rate reduced from 43.3p to 16p and from 1^St November it will reduce again to 15.44p. However, you are still paid 4.5p for each unit of electricity that you don’t use and export back to the national grid, up from 3.2p.

What kind of Return on Investment can I get on a Solar PV installation ?

With nearly all energy suppliers increasing their prices over the last few days, our attention returns to solar panels as another option to beat the energy price hikes. Solar still provides a return-on-investment of about 8%, which is higher than all the high-street banks, and your installation can be paid off in about twelve years. Not only is it a green option, it can be seen as as a serious investment and a way to avoid the inevitable further rises of energy bills.

What if I choose to sell my house?

We live in tough economic times and the housing market remains a buyers’ market. Estate agents are desperate for those extra features which will separate one house from the next. Solar panels are most certainly a plus point. House prices will probably follow those in the USA, where solar panels are currently more prevalent. Research by the US National Renewable Energy Lab has shown that houses powered by solar energy are likely to sell for 17% more than those powered by non-renewable fuel. What’s more, they are likely to sell 20% more quickly when put on the market.

Furthermore, any individual who buys a house that is already fitted with solar panels benefits from the increases that the installation brings to a homeowner, as the ownership of the panels and the Feed-In Tariff – where selling surplus electricity back to the national grid results in a profit – is transferred with the property. Also, if the homeowner makes any profits, they are tax free (around £900 a year for a typical 3kw system), which is a huge incentive to prospective buyers, especially as they will not be offsetting any initial installation costs. In an age where we must look to offset our carbon footprints; in an age where many activities such as travel contribute significantly to greenhouse gas emissions, individuals are looking for ways to make their way of living more environmentally clean.

So in conclusion, with installation costs going down, the value of your property increasing AND the high yields on investment, solar panels still reflect a very good investment for your home. If you have a south facing roof and are not planning to move in the immediate future, you would be mad not to! You can visit our solar section to find out more.

N.B

These figures have once again changed, please see the latest update here.

Update 8^th November 2012: Since this article was written Mr Obama has won a second term as President of the United States. You can see our thoughts on what impact this may have over the next 4 years at the bottom of the post.

The first all-nighter I ever pulled was to watch the 2000 Presidential Election between George W Bush and Al Gore (the latter becoming an outspoken individual on climate change). In the months leading up to the election, I became obsessed: I was following anything that would allow me to have a better understanding of which way the vote would fall. It all culminated on the first Tuesday of November, the box office event itself, the US Presidential Election.

This particular event was particular fascinating to me as it had a very British feel to it, reflecting our love of cricket – it all ended up a score draw after more than 5 days of play!!

Two further presidential elections have since passed, and we are on the eve of the 2012 Presidential election. Since I have been following it, I get the sense that energy security and the environmental agenda are resonating with more and more of the US electorate.

Since the early 2000’s, oil price have gone from an average $20 to over $100 per barrel, which has led to a 3-fold increase in price at the pumps. At the same time, domestic heating bills in the US have gone through the roof (in much the same way as the UK). The need for the USA to have a steady, uninterrupted supply of fuel and for home owners to be able to access this fuel at a reasonable price and use it more efficiently will resonate as being an important issue with potential voters.

The purpose of this blog (from the other side of the pond) is to examine more closely what each presidential candidate is saying about these policies. This blog isn’t a judgement of their past performance, but more a balanced appraisal what they have delivered so far, which should help us try and predict what they might do over the next 4 years should they get elected.

Some political analysts have said that the environment and energy policy is one of the areas that the candidates can clearly be distinguished in terms of their views, while others have also said there’s not a whisker between the two when it comes to these issues.

Let’s first turn to the incumbent candidate the president of the United States – Barack Obama, and examine the positive and regressive steps he has taken on sustainable energy and the environment.

Mr Obama’s view on the Environment & Clean Energy

You don’t have to go back that far to see how Mr Obama feels about the environment – in fact, you only need to look back at what was said about the subject at the recent Democratic Party National Convention. Mr Obama made clear in his speech that he will support investment in renewables (such as wind & solar PV), because he is concerned about the effects on the environment. In addition, he has also championed other solutions like the ‘greening’ of the US motor industry, which has now seen a record number of hybrid and electric models being rolled off the production line and on the US highways.

Mr Obama’s political record

Ever since Mr Obama has held political office in Capitol Hill as a Senator, he has frequently voted fro pro environmental measures. He has consistently supported trying to get the US to rely less on oil imports, whilst at the same time aimed to promote research and use for environmentally energy to balance the US energy supply. For example, in 2005 he backed the then McCain – Lieberman amendment, which would have established an earlier version of a cap-and-trade system. He had also spoken in favour for other carbon emission amendments and policies that supported use of cleaner techniques for industry and road travel.

As President, Mr Obama was widely credited by international press for trying to pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009 through Congress, which would have effectively have established a limits to the amounts of carbon dioxide emitted in the US. The bill would also have established carbon permits, which companies could have bought and sold to emit carbon. However, although this bill was passed by the House of Representatives and gave Mr Obama plus points for environmental policy credentials, the bill died soon after in the Senate, where it was met by staunch opposition.

He has to be praised for the way he handled the BP oil disaster off the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. While robustly publicly naming and shaming a British organisation was seen as a bit heavy handed in the UK, in hindsight, it was the correct approach and set a firm tone on how oil companies should operate and conduct themselves when it comes to oil drilling and exploration.

One can argue that Mr Obama was staying true to his election pledge of making the US less reliant on oil when earlier this year he signalled his opposition to the extension of the Keystone Pipeline. In the time he has been President, we have seen a record number of renewable energy projects kick off, such as: seeing a fourfold increase in solar PV farms started or being built; nearly doubling of total energy being produced by biomass and wind, an unprecedented amount of federal funds being directed into energy efficiency and carbon emission projects.

However, Mr Obama hasn’t gone far enough

Recent assessment of history through shows that Mr Obama’s administration has shown a much lower appetite to bring in policies and initiatives on the environment. The reason behind it that the economy and safeguarding American jobs has been the most important issue in the US since the economic downturn in 2007/08, and talking about the environment in this situation has been dismissed as being out of step and out of touch with the American voters.

Countering the ‘anti-oil drilling expansion’ points mentioned above, Mr Obama actually just before the Gulf of Mexico oil spill voted in favour of easing offshore drilling. Also, he was a major critic of the Keystone Pipeline, but has recently disappointed environmentalists by seemingly siding with a more measured building programme. In addition, since Mr Obama has been the President, oil output levels in the US have actually increased and have returned to their pre-2003 levels.

These points, looking from the outside, are contradictory to his rather pro environment stance as given prior to getting elected, and his more recent green rhetoric leading up to the 2012 Presidential campaign.

What do we think Mr Obama will do if he was re-elected?

We see more of the same policies on the environment and clean energy from Mr Obama in his second term as President. We don’t believe we will see a cap-and-trade system introduced any time soon in the US, with the recent Democratic convention highlighting that Mr Obama doesn’t necessarily carry the voices of the whole party when it comes to this issue.

A second term will probably lead with more measured initiatives, such as once again focusing of improving vehicle efficiency and ensuring more cars on the road pass that critical 35.5 miles to the gallon range. Under Mr Obama in his second term, we should also see more nuclear power expansion, with the Fukushima disaster not abating the appetite for this power source in the US any time soon.

We don’t see federal spending on subsidies for solar PV, wind and biofuels stopping any time soon, but with pressure to reduce the federal budget from next year, we may see major cuts for these industries, just as we saw here with the feed-in-tariffs in the UK in 2012.

As mentioned, with oil output in the US increasing under Mr Obama, measures to support shale gas fracking will be central to the long term energy solution, but so will energy capture measures, which Mr Obama wants to see implemented on power stations up and down the country to reduce the carbon emissions and increase the state of welfare for local communities.

Let’s turn to the Republican Party challenger – Mitt Romney– and examine the positive and regressive steps he has taken on sustainable energy and the environment.

Mr Romney’s view on the Environment & Clean Energy

The view of the Presidential candidate Mr Romney (since the Presidential candidate selection process started) is to make the US more self sufficient when it comes to energy use and decreasing the barrel of oil imports. While Mr Romney is also for developing clean energy, he is firmly against what he calls ‘crony capitalism’ to enable this – which is federal intervention and using central government tax dollars to subsidise green programmes. While he was in public office as the governor of Massachusetts, he has accepted that there are man-made forces at work which have caused the warming of the planet. But how does his previous political record stack up on these issues and what does the crystal ball say about what type of green policies he would push through if he were  elected as President?

Mr Romney’s political record on the environment

When Mr Romney was the Governor of Massachusetts, he pushed through policies that were pro environment and pro conservation. While he was in office he made many statements stating that he believed in climate change and was pro interventionist policies that would encourage renewable energies.

An example of his clean energy agenda, as Governor, he appointed a prominent environmental advisor, Douglas Foy, to oversee some of the programmes that were subsequently introduced. Throughout his time as Governor, his state saw the launch of over 70 initiatives including: trying to tax vehicle emissions, cleaning up factories and using tax and spend policies to promote the growth of clean energy generation. He supported ambitious targets such as aiming to generate 15% of the state’s energy from renewables and cutting 25% of Co2 emissions from state agencies by 2020.

In the 2000’s, Mr Romney had clearly been pro active in trying to be on the side of public health and using the state executive powers to put forward policies that are seemingly now more out of character with his current Presidential campaign. In addition, he also wanted to limit offshore drilling, and was at one stage an advocate of a regional cap-and-trade carbon emission mechanism.

What we think Mr Romney would do if he were elected as President

Time magazine’s recent article described Mr Romney’s attitude to energy policy as “drill baby, drill”, which was an assessment of a 21 page energy white paper he produced for this presidential campaign. The paper leads us to believe that a Romney administration would likely relax oil drilling restrictions, cut regulation and approve the completion of the Keystone pipeline which Mr Obama has opposed.

While Mr Romney is still for the development of energy technology and funding research in this area, he is not about to do so at the expense of fossil fuels. While he wants to have a ‘level playing field’ for energy generation, he contradicts himself, as he doesn’t support removing subsidies for already quite profitable oil companies. Our crystal ball says that Mr Romney is not about the halt drilling and shale gas fracking activities, which have recently led to the US once again being a net oil and gas exporter.

Most international pundits are slightly more pessimistic about the US committing itself to a second, more ambitious round of carbon emission targets under his stewardship. Then again, even Mr Obama’s current administration wasn’t too willing to accept a global way forward at last year’s Durban summit.

Concluding points

Looking at the year so far where we have had heat waves, droughts, wildfires and hurricanes, it’s hard not to think that all these extreme weather events have had nothing to do with climate change. Our assessment is that both candidates see the importance of climate change as an issue, with Mr Obama directly addressing this problem, but with Mr Romney acknowledging it as an issue but prioritising energy security through the expansion of fossil fossils.

Whoever becomes the next President of the United States will have an almighty challenge on their hands. The US economy has never hit the highs it saw in 2007 and to an extent; deficit spending has been a major component in keeping the economy there afloat. So whoever is in the White House will have to make some tough decisions about where federal dollars are spent. It is easy in those situations to slash energy policy development budgets and spend less on environmental conservation, but at what ultimate cost?

The UK model is by no means perfect, and in fact our current government should be doing a lot more, but it has maintained the feed in tariffs and invested a chunk of money towards research into renewables, because over the pond there is more of a consensus that if you invest in green fuels now, it will pay off in the long run with cheaper and more secure energy supply.

Update on Green policies debated at the 2nd Presidential Debate:

At the 2nd Presidential debate in New York on the 16th October, Mr Obama and Mr Romney clashed on energy policy. Mr Obama argued for more green energy solutions such as biofuel, wind power and solar PV as well as extending programmes to encourage energy efficiency in generation and transportation. Mr Romney on the other hand argued for more oil drilling and an expansion in coal production, with a view to make North America energy self sufficient. Mr Obama in our view had slightly more convincing arguments in this debate to answer to some of the current problems in energy security and the challenges on the environment.

Update: 8^th November 2012, Mr Obama wins a 2nd Term

Mr Obama having won the election, in his victory speech said that he doesn’t want future generations to be blighted by ‘destructive’ effects of global warming. His call to action on the environment in this speech could be taken as signal that during his 2^nd term, there will be renewed focus on giving climate change and renewable energy the appropriate focus they deserve!

At a domestic level to signal a renewed focus on the environment and clean energy, we expect continued support (underpinned by tax breaks) for renewable technologies such as wind and biofuels from the President. In addition, we expect Mr Obama to be less willing to support additional subsidies on fossil fuels and cool the expansion of drilling and fracking activities. However this may be tough given that these industries support quite a number of jobs.

However we appreciate that many bold initiatives such as taxing carbon and even resurrecting the 2009 Cap & Trade bill will be very challenging give a divided Congress. On a high note, we hope the next 4 years means more ‘green’ jobs, more clean energy and smarter ways on how energy is consumed in the US.

What is the Solar Power Tipping Point?

The solar power tipping-point is coming. In fact, in some countries with particularly high energy costs and lots of sun (like Hawaii), it has already been reached. The tipping point, also known as grid parity or the golden goal, is the moment when solar produces power at the same price as electricity from the grid. At this point, energy produced from solar sources will match other more traditional sources such as coal, or even gas.

At the moment, the reason for putting solar PV (photovoltaic) panels on your roof in the UK is an economic one. It is the direct result of the feed-in tariff (and to a lesser extent the export tariff), which is the government policy which pays you per kWh of electricity you produce. This helps to create an artificial economy for solar PV, by increasing demand and driving uptake.

How is Solar Power going to reach the tipping point?

To hit true parity though, solar PV needs to become competitive without this helping hand. So how is this happening?

The major reason is the massive price drop in the silicon PV modules. In 2011 the price of these modules halved, as the result of two things. Firstly, huge new solar production facilities opened across the world, particularly in China, increasing competition and actually driving smaller facilities in Europe out of business. Germany once had a world beating solar energy industry, accounting for a 20% market share in the global solar market. It now accounts for just six per cent. Secondly, technology is improving and there are increased economies of scale, which has resulted in modules coming down in price by 18% for every doubling of capacity.

Existing energy prices can also only go one way – up. With ageing infrastructure and a lack of capacity in the UK, investment and modernisation will have to be made. This will be subsidised through higher energy bills. As the supply of fossil fuels decreases or fuels become harder to source, producers will have to drill deeper or use more expensive methods.

So these mechanisms are driving us towards the tipping point, but there are also barriers to us getting there. Firstly, solar PV is still costly in the short term – £7,000 or more for a system with a decent payback. Compare this to electricity from the socket at 12p/kwh.  In the current economic climate people are unable or unwilling to pay for the installation. Obviously the higher the uptake, the higher the supply and the quicker economies of scale are introduced into the production process.

Solar PV is also intermittent: electricity is only produced when the sun is shining. There are solar PV plants in the USA that are planned to have integrated molten salt technology, which essentially will allow power stations to produce electricity 24/7, but this just isn’t viable for the domestic user. Therefore solar can’t be the only solution. It is not suitable to provide the base load in the energy mix. I think nuclear energy (either existing fission plants, or Thorium molten salt) would be best to provide the base load, which would subsequently be topped up by solar PV technologies.

Also if solar PV installations are to become commonplace in the UK, we need to make changes to the grid. In comparison to traditional power plants, solar PV installations take up much more space (per square metre). Therefore what is needed is a shift from a centralised utility grid to a decentralised grid, which will again require more investment.

Finally it is worth briefly examining the feed-in tariffs (FiT) and other subsidies; late last year the FiT for UK solar was £0.433 for every kWh of energy produced. This was cut to £0.21 in May 2012, and is due to be cut to £0.16 at the beginning of August. The FiT is supposed to support the uptake of solar energy in the UK, but the government’s decision to make such a large cut in the FiT in May had a very negative impact on the UK solar industry. Obviously the FiT should be decreased in line with falling solar module prices, but this decrease and the cuts should have been far more gradual.

In conclusion, solar will hit the tipping point and reach grid parity. It may not happen in the UK over the next couple of years, but the signs are there that it will happen by 2020. At this point, the decision to invest in either traditional fossil fuel or solar PV will hopefully become more obvious for the government.

‘Great’ Britain

The suspension bridge, penicillin, first intercity railway. What do these things all have in common? Answer – they are all Great British discoveries, with varying degrees of desirable effects.

More importantly, these inventions are synonymous with a time when Great Britain powered ahead of the world using an innovative mindset by using practical solutions that resulted in elevating London as the world capital of the merchant trade. Today, we find ourselves in a position where other countries have not only caught up with us, but have actually overtaken us. This is great for the rest of the world, as it as means that economic wealth is spreading globally.

However, as more countries follow the successful British Industrial model of development, the world in which we live has become more and more polluted, and is also struggling to meet the demand for energy that is driving this change. Britain itself has unfortunately become stuck; ironically laboured by the model it had previously exploited so successfully.

How is Britain being left behind?

So, given that Great Britain had previously spearheaded human development and innovation, why are we not now the leading proponents of green energy and green network solutions? The answer simply lies with the fact that we are well behind continental Europe in decarbonising our economy. Our recycle rate still hovers at around 20% and our renewable energy sources account for less than 5% of our total energy output. Germany, on the other hand, has a renewable energy rate five times higher than ours. Therefore, we are in no position to lecture others on what we believe are the right ways to make a sustainable economy move forward.

The economy at the moment is languishing. I feel that we really need to pull out all the stops out as a nation to make sure we create the right climate for ideas and innovation to allow us to lead the world once again; this time, by leading a green economy with green energy provision and greater energy efficiency. I know we can seize the initiative.

What can we learn from others – the mindset?

As Brits, we are proud of our heritage and our past, but we can no longer rest on our laurels. We pulled together as a nation in previous times of crisis, and we can do it again. If we look around, we can learn a great deal from other cultures as well. For example, after being devastated by war, Japan and Korea both galvanised their populations into action and, due to concerted effort and focus, rose to become two important global economies.

More specifically, when Japan was defeated after World War Two, it signalled to the nation that the values that had bought them to that point in their history were no longer relevant. They needed a new way of thinking and collaborating with the world to move forward. By observing and learning from our car industry, engineering projects, bridges, roads and railways (and those across Europe and the USA) – the Japanese were able to produce cars quickly, but with even better value for money. They also constructed more impressive roads and faster railways, and their business values and quest for innovation brought us household names including Sony, Canon and Nintendo.

In the United Kingdom, we have an aged distribution network both for electricity provision and in the supply of gas for heating. It is an industry that is continually struggling under the demand and requires increased maintenance focus and investment to keep at the same operating levels that we have at the moment. In the near future, the population of the UK is expected to exceed 70 million, resulting in demand for yet more energy. If we stick with relying on the old systems, it will result in actions such as digging up our roads, simply to install yet another transformer. This will cause more chaos and misery – we must confine this model to the history books.

What can we learn from others – are there any practical solutions?

One great idea that I have seen on the continent, and which I would like see applied in the UK, is to introduce a self-sustaining community model to replace the network model we have at the moment. On the island of Samso in Denmark, for example, their energy provision is operating entirely self-sufficiently (independent from the mainland), thereby allowing its inhabitants to live completely off-grid.

A CBS report described visiting there like ‘turning back the clock’; the town boasts idyllic features and buildings steeped with history. But on closer inspection, it is actually ‘way ahead of its time’. The island used to rely exclusively on oil and coal (much like the current energy solution we have in the UK), but since the end of the last decade, it has managed to reduce its carbon emissions by 140%, which when articulated means it has started to export electricity back to the mainland. More importantly, it has demonstrated that you don’t need a centralised model – the spine of a network in the middle of the country that relies on big polluting power stations and radioactive nuclear power plants to provide your home and business with the energy needs. It is far more localised than that.

This is a truly inspirational story for us all, and offers a municipalised model we should look closely at imitating. If you have been reading about key concepts in the news lately, such as smart grids, smart meters, feed-in-tariffs, solar PV and heat pumps, you may have started to build a picture of what our energy provision could look like over the next two decades. 

How can Britain learn and adapt to the changes required?

The EcoIsland project on the Isle of Wight offers a perfect example of how Britain can learn. Although the projects that have currently been deployed on the island are small scale, like the one at Shale (renewable energy for a community housing area), the Eco-Islanders one day envision 120MW of power being produced by renewable sources.

Moreover, biomass, wave and tidal power will also have a major role to play. To make it more self-sustaining, the islanders would all be involved – they would have a stake in the energy business to ensure that they reap the benefits delivered. Therefore, this is just one step at the start of a long journey to show that a British community like the one on the Isle of Wight can one day be self sustaining and become the Samso of tomorrow.

But how do you convince millions of people to implement eco-friendly solutions in a major conurbation that houses millions of people and provides transportation for them? Well, closer to my home in London, a £30m Low Carbon (LCL) project has been initiated by UK Power Networks and is being funded out of OFGEM’s Low Carbon Network Fund to provide community-based proofs of concept. One day these can be leveraged as an all-encompassing solution for this great city.

This LCL project, located within the Mayor of London’s green zones, will look to implement solutions such as the one we have seen at Shale, but on a much bigger scale. Furthermore, for a big city like London, some of these solutions will also require behavioural shifts – for example users will have to be educated as to how to understand their smart meters so that businesses and households can make those optimal energy decisions. For transport networks, it will be necessary to show where electricity charging points are so that electric car users can optimally plan their journeys.

Keeping innovation and change in the mindset

I hope therefore, that over the next few years, we will see many changes in Britain, like some of those rapid changes that were experienced during the Industrial Revolution. Electricity sources are going to become more varied and we may well see electric vehicles taking over our roads soon. At this point, we have to be aware that, for this to happen, we need to climb some metaphorical mental mountains to try to catch up with the nations that are surging ahead of us. I have no doubt that with some dedication; we can eventually leap ahead, so as to once again be seen as leading the world from the front.

To conclude, this means keeping an open mind when encountering new technologies over the next few years. It is easy to stick with what we know – no one likes change – but we have been innovators in the past, and we can continue to be so. Wind turbines are something new – we must be ready to embrace them and realise that they are helping the UK back to a more important, and sustainable, position.

‘Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children’

I have a lot of time for this proverb; I think it wonderfully captures the necessity for the duty of care that we should have for the world around us. After all, we are here for 70-80 years, which, in the grand scheme of things, is simply the blink of an eye. We are mere visitors on this planet, to hopefully enjoy all that is around us and leave it in reasonable shape for the generations to come that were so kind to lend it to us.

The world is roughly 4.5bn years old (as far as we can tell), and humans, as we recognise them now, have only been wandering around for 200,000 years. So what is the issue? Well, I am ‘visiting’ earth in a seemingly turbulent time; while we push frontiers of science (like this week’s finding of the Higgs boson we also have on-going arguments (to put it nicely) about how religion should shape our lives, disagreements over oil reserves and so forth, some of which have been going for decades, while others are relatively new.

I don’t think my arrival on the planet is the only one that has coincided with unrest. My father was born in 1941, slap bang in the middle of the 2nd World War. I think the lessons learnt from this event in particular, allowed humans to gain a spiritual perspective and wisdom that had perhaps not been present before. It provided us with the ability to draw a line and start afresh, all pulling together to rebuild fallen countries and forge new relationships with people who years before had been considered adversaries.

The challenges facing us 70 years later are obviously very different, but once again we all need to pull together, working to protect the planet albeit in a different way to that which was done all those years ago.

As the current lessees of the planet, we have the chance to pull together in the same direction, all of us, transcending faith, politics and even our own limitations.  As Al Gore puts it, we are one of the lucky few generations to be given a ‘Generational mission – the thrill of being forced by circumstance to put aside the pettiness and conflict that so often stifle the restless human need for transcendence; the opportunity to rise’.

So, since we have been given this mission, and we are all in it together, why are we so slow to act? We talk a lot; we have governments who could debate the same topics 24/7. They seem obsessed with setting up enquiries; someone burned their toast – how did this happen? What can we put in place to stop it happening in the future? Maybe there should be a new governmental body?

All these debates and enquiries seem to be disguising what is in effect, simply procrastination. We need to take action; as Martin Luther King put it ‘Procrastination is the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked and dejected with lost opportunity’.

Unfortunately, the mission we have been given has a time limit, we are fast reaching a tipping point, one that we won’t come back from; if you go to Co2 Now.org, it illustrates how we are adding CO₂ to the atmosphere, roughly increasing by 2ppm / year.

This CO₂ and other man made greenhouse gases increase the ‘thickness’ of the atmosphere. As a result it traps the infrared radiation that would otherwise be reflected off the surface of the planet back into space. This results in a heating of the planet, known simply as global warming.

It is now relatively well understood that human activity over the last 100 years has led to much higher levels of CO₂ in the atmosphere. A growing population and increased demand for electricity per person has resulted in increased CO₂ levels to 397ppm as of May 2012, and in the next year or so we will see this level go through the 400ppm barrier.

The last time this occurred was 15 million years ago according to Aradhna Tripati, a professor at the University of Calafornia (UCLA), when global temperatures were 5 to 10 degrees warmer than they are today. Prior to the Industrial Revolution in the late 19th and early 20th century, the carbon dioxide level was about 280ppm.

Obviously these readings ignore the estimated 48% of CO₂ we have released into the atmosphere as a result of burning fossil fuels that have been absorbed by the oceans since 1800. Every day the oceans are thought to absorb an additional 22 million tonnes of CO₂, which is approximately 1/3 or our daily output. This CO₂ is changing the chemistry of the water, making it more acidic. The acidity is affecting the growth of coral, which use carbonate ions in the sea and prohibits the development of shell dwelling organisms living in the sea.

No one yet has been able to intrinsically link climate change with warming temperatures & less predictable weather. However the patterns do fit; glaciers melting, nine of the ten hottest years on record  since 2000 (records began in 1880), increased flooding across the world and the list goes on.

Our mission, should we choose to accept it, should be a global effort to combat climate change. We have the technology to allow us to do just that, we can capture carbon, and make useful products (not just store it), we can produce clean electricity, using renewable sources such as wind, solar, geothermal, hydroelectric and new techs that are being developed all the time.

We need less procrastination by our Governments; someone bold enough to  make the big calls and implement new legislation to get the ball rolling. Legislation is present now, but we need to go bigger, brasher and better.

Now is the time for a unified generational mission so that our kids and their kids can enjoy the world that they have so kindly lent to us. After all, the actions that we carry out now will have an impact that lasts well beyond our lifetime.

As always, thanks for reading – and let us know your thoughts in the comments box below.

What is the Smart Export Guarantee?

After the closure of the Feed in Tariff (FiT), the government introduced The Smart Export Guarantee (SEG) which launched in 2020. The scheme allows growth in electricity generation from green microgeneration technologies.

How does the Smart Export Guarantee work?

Licensed electricity suppliers can offer a tariff and make payment to small-scale low-carbon generators for electricity exported to the National Grid (considering certain criteria are met).

The following low-carbon, renewable technologies are eligible for the SEG:

• solar panels (solar pv)
• wind turbines
• hydro electricity
• micro combined heat and power
• anaerobic digestion

If you decide install any of the above renewable generation for the home, you should be eligible for the SEG tariff, providing you meet certain criteria.

• Your installation must be 5MW capacity or less (50kW for micro-CHP).
• You need to take electricity readings from your meter – this is going to be easier if you have a smart meter installed, which will automatically take the readings for you.
• Your installation must be MCS-certified.

Savings on electricity bills

Every kWh of electricity that you create yourself and then use in your home means that you don’t need to buy that unit from the electricity company. Electricity is currently priced at about 15 pence/kWh when you buy it from any of the big six energy companies, so the more electricity you produce and use in your home, the more you save.

Smart Export Guarantee registration

In practice in the UK, the energy companies with over 150,000 customers (British Gas, EoN, SSE, Scottish Power, EDF and NPower, etc) are required by law to provide the SEG to homes and businesses. Other smaller electricity suppliers may not offer the SEG as it is not compulsory for them to do so. The full list of registered SEG licensed suppliers is available on the OFGEM website here.

Once you have the product installed through the MCS, you should receive a certificate confirming MCS compliance. Speak to your energy company  that is approved for the SEG – express your interest in receiving the SEG. Your supplier will confirm your eligibility, cross checking your details to the MCS database. On confirmation of the SEG your details will also be added to the OFGEM Central SEG Register.

You may also need to agree a process for meter reading and whether you want to opt out from export tariffs. An important point to note is that it is far more economical to use as much of the electricity you produce in the home as you can, rather than selling it back to the grid. Using a kWh of the electricity you produce in your home saves you buying it from the energy suppliers at 15p, while you can only sell it back to the grid for 4.77p.