Electricity suppliers are making people with solar panels on their roofs jump through unnecessary bureaucratic hoops before their electricity can start earning them money. This benefits the suppliers since timewasting allows them to keep receiving free electricity for longer.
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Local Energy Pricing – Another madcap idea from the free-marketeers threatens to derail net-zero progress
For once I am moved to agree with big power companies and denounce the schemes for local energy pricing as a bad idea. This stupid idea has been dreamt up by the National Grid in a lazy effort to deal with the problem of balancing increasing quantities of renewable energy. It is stupid because it will both reduce the amount of solar and wind projects coming forward and make them much more expensive for the consumer.
How electricity consumer bills could be slashed by reforming the way renewable energy projects are paid
Consumer bills could be slashed by an average of around £140 per household per year if renewables incentives were reformed to give renewable energy generators long term security for their returns. Now, this sounds like a fairytale ending that keeps everyone happy. Is it? Well, it’s for real except that the big energy companies won’t like it. That is because they would prefer to carry on siphoning off profits from the sky-high electricity wholesale prices that are inflating the income generated from renewable energy projects funded under the Renewables Obligation (RO).
These higher than necessary payments for renewable energy generation are artificially inflating what consumers have to pay in their electricity bills. The price cap set by OFGEM would be lower as a result of sensible reform of the RO payments and consumer bills would be less.
The RO funds around 30 per cent of the UK’s entire electricity supply
If the UK installed as much onshore wind power as in Germany at least half our electricity could be coming from it!
If the UK installed as much wind power per square km as Germany does now, then, in 2050, the UK could be generating around half the level of UK electricity consumed in 2020 solely from onshore wind. This is despite the fact that Germany has a much larger proportion of its land reserved for nature protection compared to the UK.
Getting bigger but not safer or cheaper – the myth of Rolls Royce and its very big non-modular reactor
Rolls Royce’s so-called small modular reactor (SMR) is getting bigger, but is likely to have fewer special safety features compared to EDF’s increasingly pricey design for Hinkley C.
See the green buildings webinar – Sign the petition for green buildings
Please watch the Green Buildings webinar, held on March 16th by clicking here!
Hear about the campaign for mandatory solar panels and banning fossil fuel boilers in new builders. The speakers are first, Jonathan Porritt, longstanding green leader and founder of ‘Forum for the Future’; then Lucy Pedler a green building expert from the Green Register; Beccy Smart from the environmentally sensitive housing campaign; David Toke talking about the campaign and 100percentrenewableuk; and Charmian Larke talking about new buildings and energy poverty.
Sign the petition for mandatory solar panels on buildings and fossil fuels to be banned in new buildings. See the petition page here.
Please share the petition page link as widely as you can on social media. Please write to you MP asking for solar pv to be mandatory on all new buildings and for fossil fuel boilers to be banned in them.
In a rush to replace Russian gas, the EU has damaged its own climate change strategy
The European Union’s recent proposals to end imports of Russian gas before 2030 in the wake of the Ukraine invasion are blighted by the bloc’s support for unnecessary and expensive technologies.
Why the energy price cap is crucial to making sure renewable energy saves money for consumers
Don’t let yourself be fooled by energy companies complaining that the consumer energy price cap is against free-market principles. That is because the price cap is an essential tool in making sure that the energy suppliers pass on savings from cheap renewable energy to consumers in the form of lower energy bills.
Energy consumers face huge hidden cost overrun bill to protect corporate investors in Sizewell C
The Government is hiding the fact that, based on its own figures, Sizewell C could very well result in a huge increase in consumer bills, several times larger than it has so far been implied. This is because consumers will be expected to pay directly for what the Government’s own figures say is a high likelihood of extensive cost overruns. The Government will expose consumers to this risk in order to protect corporate investors from suffering the losses themselves – otherwise the Government will not get private investors. This is under the so-called Regulated Asset Base (RAB) method of funding Sizewell C.
Opposition Parliamentarians back campaign for solar pv on new buildings
Parliamentarians from the Liberal Democrats, Green Party and the Labour Party have backed the Green Buildings Campaign organised by 100percentrenewableuk. 100percentrenewableuk is campaigning for solar pv to be made mandatory on suitable new buildings and also that fossil fuel heating should be banned in them. Tim Farron, the ex-leader of the Liberal Democrats, and MP for Westmoreland and Lonsdale, is seeking to organise an Adjournment Debate on the subject in the House of Commons.
Why home batteries and electric car batteries could be a cheaper way to balance renewable energy compared to centralised storage solutions
Decentralised energy resources (DER) consisting in large part of solar pv units and storage batteries and electric vehicles (EVs) sited in domestic or commercial properties are increasing in number and capacity. Yet the key energy think tanks are busily ignoring this phenomenon in favour centralized-only solutions for balancing fluctuating renewables. This criticism certainly applies to a much publicised report published recently by Aurora which, apart from a fleeting reference to smart charging for electric vehicles (EVs) appears to completely ignore DER, seemingly in favour of large-scale battery assets. In fact there will be, arguably is already, a very large and growing DER in existence which would be much cheaper to mobilise than a lot of the centralised battery assets.
Costs of heat pumps and solar panels plunge for new homes
The Green Buildings campaign, promoted by 100percentrenewableuk, is claiming that making 3kW of solar panels and heat pumps compulsory for new homes will increase the cost of a new house by no more than 4% (probably less) – that’s little more than half the annual increase in house prices! Fitting heat pumps and solar pv is, anyway, much cheaper than retrofitting them onto existing buildings.
Sign our petition for mandatory solar pv and banning of fossil fuel boilers in new buildings. Here!
Spiking natural gas exports prove that renewables give us energy security, not gas
The recent revelation that exports of natural gas from the UK have actually increased during the gas price crisis provides strong evidence that producing more natural gas from British sources does nothing to help protect British energy security. By contrast, sourcing energy from British-based renewable energy under fixed price long term contracts will dramatically reduce the bills consumers have to pay compared to reliance on fossil fuels.
Fightback against the net zero skeptics and support the green buildings petition!
100percentrenewableuk has issued a call to achieve cheap, easily implementable steps of making sure solar panels and heat pumps are fitted to all new buildings. Fightback against the net zero sceptics who are pushing the Government to dodge their commitments to move the decarbonisation agenda forward!
Sign the petition calling for: A law making it a) mandatory for all suitable new roofs to be fitted with solar panels and b) banning fossil fuel powered boilers in new buildings, is vitally important to cut down on the vast quantities of easily achievable renewable energy deployment that are being wasted all of the time.
Labour bids to curb cost overruns from Sizewell C development
The Labour frontbench has put down an amendment to the Nuclear Financing Bill which would stop the automatic reimbursement of EDF for excess construction costs of the planned Sizewell C nuclear power plant. The amendment, put forward by Shadow Green New Deal and Energy Minister Alan Whitehead, has been defeated by the Conservative majority in the Commons, but will soon come up for a vote in the House of Lords.