Yesterday there was some MASSIVELY good news announced. Ed Miliband produced an incentive for householders to embrace green living, making it affordable to turn off the gas and oil and switch to solar and wind energy. It is called the Renewable Heat Incentive and is a world first. The details are here.I have been scouring the internet to find the deluge of news reports and blog posts dedicated to this important and potentially planet saving event and have found pretty much nothing! How can this be? Perhaps the numbers mean little to people. So I decided to do the numbers on the house I live in… now first to find a picture of my house..
Yep, this the best I can find. My house is the one on the horizon on the far left.. see it? It is white. And quite big, four bedrooms and big rooms downstairs. I spend £2040 per year on electricity and oil. If I had a ground source heat pump and solar PV panels my house could be Carbon Neutral – I would over the year use no oil or electricity. I would need 30 000kWh worth of heat from the heat pump and the government would pay me 7p per kWh, giving me £2100 in income per year, and I would make 2.5kWp of electricity from my solar PVs to drive the heat pump plus all my electrics in the house and the government would pay me 41p per kWh, giving me £1025 in income for that, the total being £3125pa. Add this to the current energy bills that I would no longer pay and the saving is £5165. The system for my house would cost £25 000, so the payback period looks like 5 years to me. This makes it possible for many more people and institutions to go green, no more scrabbling around for grants here and there either. Hurray!!!
Press release from the Department of Energy and Climate Change today:
“Today’s greenhouse gas emissions statistics are encouraging and show a continued decline in greenhouse gas emissions of nearly 2% during 2008. We are now clearly exceeding our Kyoto target of 12.5% below 1990 levels. UK emissions are now 19.4% below 1990 levels without emissions trading or 22% including emissions trading. The UK is demonstrating the kind of year-on-year reductions that set an example in the world community.
“Building on the Copenhagen Accord is a priority for the government and we will increase our efforts to encourage others not only to associate with it but to accelerate its implementation.”
“We are determined to strengthen and sustain the momentum behind the low-carbon transition in the UK, supporting investment in low carbon technology, creating green jobs and providing a healthier future for everyone.
