Windows, Solar-Power and George Monbiot

I feel a bit sorry for George in a way – I think he used to know Susan back in the day… although I don’t neccessarly feel sorry for him for that, although…

No I feel sorry for him because he’s a nice bloke, and he’s a fuckwit magnet. His column in the guardian is invariably followed by braying heaps of bile-spewing, right-wing cunts… and when I see him actually trying to answer some of these people I suffer a sensation akin to seeing one of your mates playing in a rubbish dump.

Anyway, he recently went on about how people feeding solar-home-generated electricity back into the grid is basically just a giant shift of money from the poor to the middle-classed. The rubbish dump murmured in vague (if not slightly confused) approval, because the rubbish-dump wants nuclear-power… or coal… or anything that’s basically top-down controlled, and polluting.

(If you’re reading this George, here’s why Nuclear is a seriously stupid idea.)

But back to the feed-in tariffs being a transfer of money from the poor to the middle-classed… he may be right. Personally I think being able to supply energy for sale to the grid is an incredibly important thing to be able to do… but I didn’t realise it came with such massive subsidies – so theoretically you could buy electricity from the grid at 7p and sell it for 44p.

It might be worth checking with the Germans to see if crims actually did this… and maybe the Germans aren’t as… assiduously criminal as the British (because they are, oh yes, they are)… but that just seems to be a bit out of wack to me. The subsidy I mean.

However.

I think purely looking at it in terms of superficial economics is… not taking in the whole picture.

The photo at the top is something that you see all over England – permanently bricked up windows… because back in the 17th Century (in the age of Rickets), some bright spark had the bright idea of taxing the number of windows in everyone’s houses.

The great unwashed responded by bricking up their windows. The tax created a bricking-up-windows pressure.

Now, the government creating a platform where people get paid for their net energy is creating various pressures.

1) The pressure to be more efficient – so your net is higher. President Carter came on TV wearing a jumper in the hope that everyone would be more frugal with energy savings, and everyone laughed at him. They won’t laugh at this.

It would be fairer (and have a similar effect) if the subsidy went on insulation – but “saving” money is a very different psychological proposition to “making” money.

2) It creates a pressure for smart-metering. If you want to increase your net energy production, you need to know what your overheads are.

3) I’ll tell you what they are – they’re all to do with heating water. I think solar water heaters might actually be a better way of lowering your energy costs than solar-electricity – I visited a guy who was selling them (for 3K $NZ a go) and on a cloudy day, at mid-day, the tubes were too hot to touch. I know they won’t work in winter, but… it’s still a fairly mega subsidy, coming out of the sky to you for free.

But failing that, lagging your pipes becomes an investment with immediate returns, rather than something you might get around to one day.

4) It creates a pressure to produce other micro-generation devices – not just solar. Solar is piss-weak really – although the prices are coming down massively (see Konarka et al), you’re not going to be using them do your cooking any time soon. But… converting an excercycle? A little wood-gas generator?

I can see bad as well as good coming of this to be honest – as I say, The British are assiduously criminal (I know. I’m British. I used to work for a slum-lord)… but it does create a pressure to produce other micro-generation devices – a pressure away from top-down control of energy (which has created so much in the way of war and suffering) to something localised. I think this part is vital to be honest.

So… I’m a poor person. By UK standards – and I’ve lived in about 20 different houses in the UK… and I’m not sure that any of this would have applied to me because I either rented or squatted (or lived in a van) but… I guess I would have had the sky-space to do solar in about 1/3 of these properties?

Something like the little Whispergen CHP Sterling Engine generators from New Zelaand would be a better bet – although that might create an anti-tree pressure. You certainly wouldn’t be seeing skip-loads of scrap wood any more.

So although I’m not so sure about the subsidy side of things – I think being able to sell energy back to the grid creates drivers for efficiency, decentralisation, and exploration of non-solar devices. And I think it’s a good thing. There’s more to it than meets the eye I think.

As opposed to Nuclear, (which George seems to be advocating) which is just clangingly fucking wrong in every conceivable way. £8 a tonne? Don’t make me fucking laugh. If you’re British, your taxes (yes you) are still paying for the Nuclear Waste created by this generation:

Next time you see a photo of the Pyramids, you can proudly say to yourself… “Yes, my legacy will last longer than this. 3000 years from now, my radioactive waste will still be radioactive. Will they still be paying taxes then? Who can say… but one thing we know… they’ll still be looking after our (govt subsidised) pollution”