Agree 100%. Pretty sure I've said exactly the same thing on comments here. That German scheme sounded absurd the first time I heard about it, glad they've seen sense. Subsidies for micro-PV and urban wind turbines are a scam to rob the poor (who rent or live in small flats) for the rich (who own houses with roofs to put these pointless things on).

Glad that Monbiot, posh green though he is, doesn't share the middle-class green fixation with micro-everything.

All references, as ever, are on my website: http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/03/01/a-great-green-rip-off/

I know nothing of any of this.

However if what you say is correct, George, then I'm staggered. Outstanding journalism, thank you.

Excellent article! I had to double check the author to make absolutely sure it was really Monbiot writing this.

Next week from Monbiot: Why the UK needs new nuclear power stations (amongst other sensible energy policy suggestions).

Finally, it's starting to dawn on the more intelligent greens that renewable energy is not worth it, if it costs too much, which is what some of us have been saying all along.

Too bad the mainstream political parties have been seduced by the siren song of "renewables at any price" brigade.

Thanks AllyF. There's plenty more to say, for example about the negative employment effects and environmental disincentives. I'll try to follow up with a blog post later in the week.

@RightWingZealot

I disagree that all 'renewable' energy is necessarily bad. Appears to me that the problem here is not 'renewables' its the obsession with 'micro' as opposed to industrial-scale developments. I think its quite possible that large solar power plants, say, in places that actually get some sun, would be an excellent idea.

RightWingZealot:

Finally, it's starting to dawn on the more intelligent greens that renewable energy is not worth it, if it costs too much, which is what some of us have been saying all along.

Don't tar all renewables with the same brush. Some make good economic sense. But these ones come right at the bottom of the heap.

how apt it comes in on april 1st.

this government's capacity for wasting vast amounts of our money to little effect should surprise nobody, that they still get away with it is what truly shocks.

great article george.

Don't tar all renewables with the same brush. Some make good economic sense. But these ones come right at the bottom of the heap.

I completely agree George. For example, it would be wonderful if the UK built a severn barrage providing something like 7GW of green electricity with no intermittancy problems. Tidal power and large-scale hydro power are a no-brainer.

Too bad nu labour and the tories are more interested in the public perception of them being green rather than having a sensible energy policy - something that has been utterly neglected for 13 years.

Hear hear George.

I have just read James Lovelock's book, The Revenge of Gaia. He advocates nuclear. Wind and solar are for now an expensive diversion. You say geothermal is cheaper but that is limited in geographical locations.

I have also been thinking and as far as I can see, the soloution is nuclear powered planes, giant massive ones. That is a bit sci fi, but nuclear powered ships have already been built. Think massive super nuclear ships that could cross the Atlantic in 2-3 days.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_marine_propulsion

Solar is of course limited except in certain areas. Also, this man has positve ideas.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shai_Agassi
I know Israel gets a lot of bad press, but his plan for Israel is to build a network of electric cars (and ease off petroleum power in the next few years) powered by solar panels in the Negev desert. Obviously they had 2 factors, the arab trade boycott and that they live in a sunny area, but Denmark is trying a similar idea with wind powers.

A global warming solution that is going to cost billions and be utterly ineffectual......who would ever have thought it possible......?

Well said George. A potty scheme.

What we should all be doing is using solar energy to heat water (rather than generate electricity). Solar collectors cost much less than Photo-voltaic cells cells, watt for watt, and the technology works fine in Britain (it even works in places like Sweden).

We are told by the unlovely,EDF,to expect power cuts.
Is this,the latest,self-sufficiency sop?

Plus,no doubt,the government will get V.A.T.,on all pieces of kit sold,even if they end up at a boot sale near you,fairly sharpish.

By buying electricity for 7p and selling it for 44p

Couldn't you have kept quiet about that?

are we a nation of dupes?

If the opinion polls are to be believed, we are indeed very easily mislead.

The point at which photovoltaic might get interesting is when roof tiles can be made in the right materials and so you can kill two birds with one labour bill. Apparently there is some Swiss outfit that is up to this - have you heard anything?

No doubt our wonderful planning officers will object aesthetic grounds, but even if it does work - how many readers have managed to keep their photovoltaic garden lights going for more than a couple of years at most ? I thought so...

George Monbiot wrote:
replacing incandescent lightbulbs with LEDs saves £80 per tonne.

While the above looks good on paper in the real world its something else.

You see George I spent £25 on an LED bulb and received in return for my cash the equivalent of a 25 watt bulb. Don't get me wrong I do see LEDs as the future but just not at the moment.

Batleymuslim:

I think you were robbed!

McKinsey published a table of cost comparisons. It found that you could save a tonne of CO2 for ... £8 by building a nuclear power plant.

Did their calculations include the staggering costs of storing and safeguarding highly toxic wastes for thousands of years?

Or did they assume current practice whereby the taxpayer shoulder this burden and not the private concerns that construct and operate such plants?

In hot countries, where air conditioning guzzles electricity, peak demand coincides with peak solar radiation. In the UK, peak demand takes place between 5pm and 7pm on winter evenings. Do I need to spell out the implications?

In Greater London peak summer demands are almost as high as peak winter demands. The last hot summer we had in 2003 they were higher than the peak the preceding winter. The problem with wind turbines, grid-scale or small-scale is that peak demand, both during the summer and the winter is when there is an anticyclone over the British Isles and not breath of wind, those freezing cold winter nights and hot - OK, fairly warm - summer days.

I agree with the solar issue, it doesn't make sense in that at best it could only be useful for a few months a year. A new generation of nukes is what we need on the existing sites, hence not much need for new power lines; the same of which can't be said for grid-scale wind farms, where there will be a great need to build new power lines and service roads and other not-exactly-green infrastructure.

"The only body to have called this right so far is the loathsome TaxPayers' Alliance, but nobody listened because it has cried wolf too often."

Ha! It's sad that we can't even agree without needing to preface that with an insistence we loathe each other. Why can't we be friends and oppose politicians' attempts to pick losers together?

Excellent article. We have mountains of evidence showing this is daft but yet again our politicians seem to exist in some myopic shell. Irespective of what anyone thinks about the causes of climate change, we desperately need to sort out our energy supply in a sustainable manner. The failings of successive governments to get on top of this is nothing short of criminal.

Rush Limbaugh could have written the bulk of your piece. For once, I mostly agree with you. Good job standing up to your usual allies. That's typically how we all move forward on both sides of the fence.

I intend to ask this Shai Agassi's company, better place (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Better_Place) about the fesibility of building a renewable energy netwrok along Israel's proposed lines in the place I live..

I live in the Western Isles of Scotland. We have a low population and quite a large landmass. Plenty of room for wind turbines (very strong SW winds as well) and tidal power around the coast.

There are only finite points of entry so it could be entirely feasible to build an island wide renewable energy network which would be uncorrupted by mainland influence. .

My proposal is to buid renewable energy sources and have battery points everywhere and then make all the cars run on electricity (except of course for emergency services and other specialist vehicles etc) We already have the highest petrol prices in the UK-- £1.20 a litre often, so people will vote with their wallets for electric cars. We could even offer subsidised electric cars.

The trouble is that a lot of the people here are typical red blooded males. A lot of the youth here worship petroleum and shiny cars, and other Jeremy Clarksonite excesses.

However if there was some kind of bylaw passed or wahtever making only electricity cars allowed on our archipelago. Tourists and 'outsiders' coming into the island can only enter from finite points- the ferry terminals or the airport. They can't bring petrol cars on a plane. On the ferry- they leave their cars on the mainland and have to hire electric cars for the duration of their stay. That would be better for them too, they would save money on petrol.

Silicon PV is way too expensive and those hobby turbines are too small and inefficient to be of use but this is not news.

Thin Film PV is near to market and that will be a game changer.

There are better ways to use wind energy in turbulent conditions than those little rotors so perhaps this lead in tariff will encourage development of new products in this area.

You seem rather bleak of outlook these days George, chin up old fruit spring is coming :-)

MatthewSinclair:

Why can't we be friends and oppose politicians' attempts to pick losers together?

Because Matthew, you oppose progressive social spending as vehemently as you oppose regressive wasteful spending.

NapoleonKaramazov:

I think Agassi is really onto something. He seems to be winning friends too.

It certainly is expensive but don't you think that by investing in infrastructure that supports eventual feed-in capabilities and heavily incentivising the scheme, we are trying to create a cultural shift in the way we all perceive energy-use and our absorptive capacity as a population to adapt to future technologies?

Given smart metering, a more sensible option may have been an enforce unit for unit transactions on domestic supplies.

Rather than trying to store solar energy in expensive batteries systems, the national grid would soak up the power generated on the sunny day we have been forecast for the 11th August. The very same evening you could reclaim the equivalent units of power back.

While not a perfect system, it would mean on sunny or windy days less coal would need to be burnt.

Another step in the wrong direction in the equation of the great divide called inequality.

This and other ill thought out programs continues the ever-increasing gap between the minority rich and the predominant poor, who are poorer by the year.

Eventually the whole mess will implode and God save us then when people physically take to the streets and take matters into their own hands.

Its coming, nothing more surer.

In 10 years, 15 years or 25 years but it will happen when the majority just can't take anymore and have purely just to riot continuously to survive.

So are you telling me that my RX Lexus Hybrid was a waste of money (in terms of being eco-friendly) too?!

@Monbiot

Okay, I'm not going to try and convince you on everything. But if I want to expand this from feed-in tariffs to the current subsidies for offshore wind as well - the really big rip-off, I just need to convince you that it is wasteful (a pretty simple extension from the case you're making here) and regressive (any policy that pushes up energy prices)?

Best,
Matt

gpug:

It certainly is expensive but don't you think that by investing in infrastructure that supports eventual feed-in capabilities and heavily incentivising the scheme, we are trying to create a cultural shift in the way we all perceive energy-use and our absorptive capacity as a population to adapt to future technologies?

The government specifically rules this out. Here's what it says:

FITs for small-scale low-carbon electricity are intended primarily to support the widespread deployment of proven technologies now and up to 2020, rather than support development of unproven ones.

On a sunny St David's Day here in Wales, my solar thermal panels produced a tank of water at 40 C. On sunny days from May through to September, I can have more hot water than I can use.

MatthewSinclair:

You can certainly try, but the figures I've seen suggest that offshore wind, in the medium term, is a pretty good bet.

FiSynSiarad:

That's not PV, that's thermal.

i'm amazed none of the 3 main parties are planning for us all to compulsorily wear those little baseball caps with a propeller on the top. hook us all up & problem solved.

voila

x

There's no such thing as a "big efficient wind farm", George. They're hopelessly inefficient and cost-ineffective too.

What is always conveniently forgotten is that the conventional power stations they're supposed to replace still have to be kept running in parallel continuously to compensate for sudden drops in the wind strength, otherwise there would be continual blackouts. And the cost of building and maintaining wind farms out in the North Sea is in any case prohibitive at a time like this.

We have an £848.5 billion deficit to pay down - remember?

A few years ago, in France on holiday I chanced upon a display all about renewable energy. Marked upon a map of La Belle France was areas that the French government thought would be sensible for a) wind power and b) solar power.

The windy western coast of France was deemed suitable for wind power and the sunny southern half of the country was deemed worthwhile to consider solar power - all very logical.

There was a helpful guy there and in my best pigeon French I attempted a conversation about the display. It was all going well, until I asked about the land of Les Rosbifs to the Nord - he was a well travelled Frenchman and talked knowledgably about the windy Western parts of Britain and also the potential for tidal power in areas such as the Bristol Channel - and then I asked about solar power at which point he collapsed in hysterics................

So here is another huge waste of money from the government that likes to waste money.....................our money.

Good article.

In the U.S. solar power is starting to make economic sense in places like California, Arizona and Nevada where they average about 9 hours of sunlight a day. The electrical load in the South West is dominated by air conditioning and solar is more helpful than wind because it produces electrcity when the sun is shining and electricity prices are at their peak.

For some time it's been impossible to build new nuclear power and coal fired power plants in California. Planning permission for gas-fired plants and even wind projects is becoming a lot more difficult. The cost of solar panels is falling rapidly. The Chinese and Japanese have entered the the market in a big way and are bringing down production costs. In the South West solar has a real long term future.

In the UK, it's difficult to see how solar power can make economic sense in the short term. You get the impression that the government wants to do something. But the country doesn't get enough sun for this policy to be anything more than a gesture.

Brilliant writing, I like that you are an independent thinker who can criticise his own movement. I'd consider myself an enviromentalist (in ideology) but I think that nuclear fission is necessary in the short term, and nuclear fusion in the long term. The nuclear waste that we can contain seems less dangerous than our current behaviour of pouring CO2 (and others) into the atmosphere when we know how bad the consequences could be. Even with the long lived dangerous waste it is the least worst option.

It can't be said enough though that solar pv is a good technology in the right place. Plants in the sahara could supply lots of europe within 20 years. Solar water heaters are good too, even in scotland. Its imperative that we force the next (probably conservative) government to forge ahead with the vast north sea wind farms and cut this program instead.

Again, this is a really great article.

Gulfstream5:

What is always conveniently forgotten is that the conventional power stations they're supposed to replace still have to be kept running in parallel continuously to compensate for sudden drops in the wind strength, otherwise there would be continual blackouts.

Not true. There are plenty of means of grid balancing, and plenty of work showing how much thermal plant you can retire.

It would be utterly breathtaking, but could it be that some of the decision-makers in Westminster don't know the difference between the two kinds of solar energy (photo-voltaic and thermal)?

Or is it that they just don't give a toss?

GM wrote:

Batleymuslim: i think you were robbed!

Well I'm glad you think so. So on that note could you be so kind as to point the rest of us where to purchase those carbon soaking LED light bulbs you wax lyrical about. Seeing as I went well out of my way in which to find the cheapest going.

P.S
LED light bulbs are relativity a new thing when it comes to illuminating the front room. Which may explain why Philips won't be releasing their 100w version until later on in the year.

It would be utterly breathtaking, but could it be that some of the decision-makers in Westminster don't know the difference between the two kinds of solar energy (photo-voltaic and thermal)?

Or is it that they just don't give a toss?

Monbiot - You can certainly try, but the figures I've seen suggest that offshore wind, in the medium term, is a pretty good bet.

What rubbish.

Detailed independent analysis already has shown that these things do not work only within a very narrow velocity wind band and the whole thing wears out and needs renewing due to wear and tare over a short period of even 15 years.

In other words every 15 years we have to spent the same again and then another 15 years and the same infinitum.

What an exceedingly poor way and very expensive way to generate and where the cost is like the forth bridge but where this time there are literally tens of thousands of forth bridges to continually repair, keep up to speed and baisically running.

A total disaster mark my words and will be seen so in 25 years time. Think again George !

Dear George,

I am really stunned how misleading arguments you get to present. There is a certain level of justification in arguing against the "micro". The social argument involved holds true to an extent.

But we all know one thing that is literally immeasurably worse than micro. Gigantic, that is.

And in my humble experience coming from a Central-European country I would say we really would love to have an upper class that tries to manifest its snobbery through wasting their money on installing solar panels on their roofs instead of wasting their money for flying to whatever exotic destination their class just seems to fancy.

We all know too well that any industry trying to get a solid base cannot take off without a certain level of government subsidy. You better ask the manfufacturers of the wind turbines and solar panels whether they consider the scheme counter-productive. And you can also ask them what do they think of the social importance of snobs jumping on their bandwagon.

They surely would not care or more likely they would love it because they simply need to get as broad a base as possible in the society so that they have any chance to compete with the mighty and vicious nuclear and fossil lobbies.

I am really shocked it does not seem to cross your mind when denouncing the real alternatives that the most subsidised industry ever is the nuclear industry. And perhaps the only one that cannot really exist without eternal gigantic subsidies.

Hence to imply as you seem to do that the nuclear energy is by any means more cost-effective or acceptable solution to the beckoning climate change catastrophe than any, even the most uneffective, effort based on sun and wind is so misleading that it really boggles my mind how a thinker of your stature and influence can argue in such a short-sighted way.

Yours

Jakub

I seem to remember you coming out strongly for nuclear power a few years back, George. But you've been pretty quiet since then...even though it's an easy way to cut CO2. Possibly because it means lining up with people with whom you disagree on other things.

The situation in Scotland is, of course, even worse. With half the country's energy is currently supplied by nuclear... the plan seems to be to replace it with wind. Would that keep us warm in a harsh, stormy winter?

The hell it would.

Presumably the only way they can think of to get even close to the CO2 reduction targets they are committed to, is to bribe the public to help them?

May be wise to get our snouts in this trough before the power cuts come along...

Perhaps I have got this wrong, but you only get 41p per KWh generated which is measured so I'm not sure how you could get round a smart meter and the big six utility companies.

Secondly, for all its faults, solar PV is a quick win - you put it up and it doesn't really need much maintenance - and some studies suggest that it encourages further eco savings rather than any rebound (a decrease in energy offset by an increase elsewhere) effect.

Third, Energy service companies (ESCOs - where the capital costs of renewables are paid back over time through the energy savings) will overcome the regressive nature of this by offering reduced electricity bills for those in social housing - watch this space!

It's true that wind, AD and energy efficiency offer better and quicker returns, but NIMBYism, lack of knowledge and the rebound effect make it diificult to achieve any returns. Solar PV may surprise us.

www.carbonmargin.blogspot.com

Hurray - someone who might be listened to finally speaking out against this almost obscene proposal to take money from the poor and give to the wealthy (and before someone smells sour grapes, I'd have no problems affording the kit and have lots of space, but I struggle both with the ethics and the utility of the FITS)