We published this on the Ecotricity website today, but in light of the fact that the Daily Mail didn’t publish my response to this collection of misinformation by Christopher Booker in a timely fashion - I thought I would reconstruct my comments here, where the editorial policy is slightly more balanced. Note to Christopher - feel free to comment here! (more…)

It’s been an interesting week in the world of renewable. As mentioned yesterday, the G published leaked details of the Government ‘Renewable Energy Strategy:

“Revealed: UK’s blueprint for a green revolution”

So - we may actually be entering into a second industrial revolution if the government gets stuck in with that £100 billion. They’re making all the right noises… (more…)

The Government’s ‘Renewable Energy Strategy’ comes out tomorrow. Some details leaked in the G this weekend. “Revealed: UK’s blueprint for a green revolution”

The UK have had big plans before, though not this big (more…)

This is a follow-on post from my ‘What’s Wrong With Feed-in Tariffs’ posting earlier.

It’s not un-common to hear people say ‘We need Feed in Tariffs in the UK, like they have in Germany – they’ve got umpteen Gigawatts of renewables from it’. And fair enough they do. It’s important not to confuse large scale FITs with micro though.

The problem for onshore wind (large scale) in the UK is planning not financial and therefore FITs just can’t help. We need German planning laws to emulate German success, in large scale wind.

But what about micro generation; Are feed in tariffs the answer to better deliver this? (more…)

This post was inspired by a couple of comment posters who got in a discussion about Good Energy. Andre - in my opinion the claims (you refer to) of Good Energy don’t stack up. The idea that by selling existing green electricity to someone you can encourage someone else to build a wind farm is tenuous at best (more…)

This was inspired by some stats that Stuart put in a comment on my blog post about Shell pulling out of offshore. Stuart, on the question of what the real problem for onshore wind is – you threw me for a day or so with your statistics from the BWEA, good source, hard to argue with. But on closer examination I think you’ve perhaps not read them quite right. (more…)

Big news yesterday. Shell have pulled out of the London Array – the world’s largest offshore windfarm proposal. Bit of a shock to the well-spun world of offshore wind. As is the reason - that it doesn’t stack up financially. Shell, bless em, with record first quarter profits of £3.9 billion - you’d think they could afford a few windmills. Actually what they’re saying is they can’t make enough money out of it. Profit before planet of course. (more…)

I discussed Feed in Tariffs with David Cameron at our Reading turbine last week. The Tories have a policy proposal to introduce Feed in Tariffs – to do something about the lack of progress we’re making with Renewable Energy in the UK. But I don’t think this will help at all. (more…)

I often get asked to explain why the price of green electricity rises when the price of brown electricity does. I realise it’s counter intuitive. To understand it you need an understanding of how the market works. Here’s my attempt to explain: (more…)

Nope, no April fool - the Government is trying to fudge UK renewables targets – again. Splashed on the front page of the Guardian this weekend … the story had three threads:

1. The bonkers idea from Lady Whatshername, that the UK should be able
to build renewables projects in the developing world and count them towards UK targets for renewables.

First we had carbon offsetting, and now we have Target Offsetting. Renewable Energy is about more than (more…)