My pre Budget comment on environmental initiatives...

Apparently, revenue from generating your own electricity and feeding it back into the National Grid will not be taxed from April 2010 onwards. So that's one good thing. However, I don't know many people who have a spare £10,000 lying around to install a couple of kilowatt's worth* of photo voltaic panels by April, and it is unlikely that the £2,500 government grants (the current scheme) will last that long - previous schemes always ran out of funding very quickly. I know a LOT of people who would love to install solar PVs if there were a larger proportion of grant aid available (even if there were less money to be made from them in the longer term). Low interest rate loans similar to the student loan system might be a better bet - loans that most people would actually be able to get, perhaps tied in with their mortgages.

I'd cover the whole south south east facing side of my roof with solar PVs if I could afford it - 22 square metres roof area, no shadows from other buildings, trees etc. According to this website "Typically, in the UK, a 1 KW PV system (3m x 3m) will generate about 850KWh (units) of solar electricity per year", so I could have at least 6KWh panels at working at 85% up there (I hope that is fairly accurate - further down the page they mention that grants of about 50% are available, although I'm fairly sure the maximum grant is only £2,500 now).

* Since most kettles are now 3kw, you'd need at least a 4kw array working at 75% efficiency to be able to boil the kettle without drawing any electricity from the national grid... that would cost about £20,000 to install. I must buy a lottery ticket today...

This comment from The Times online about the government's commitment to low carbon building/energy programmes says a lot - click here and scroll down to read "Case Study" -

“The Government’s measures are hot air. Money needs to be going into research on how to build an energy-efficient 21st-century house. Just patching up buildings will make only a minute difference to our financial or environmental woes. Not a single new house should be built until the Government radically changes the way we build.” (my italics)

The note about making a building airtight is very interesting. When I (eventually) replace my tumble drier, I'll go for a condensing model so all that hot damp air that is taken out of the house can become hot dry air that's kept in, the cooker hood circulates within the kitchen anyway (unlike my neighbour's, which vents to the outside) and the windows have trickle vents for ventillation, but the bathroom fan has no heat recovery on it...

The boiler scrappage scheme, also detailed in that report, is revealed for the drop in the ocean that it really is . Must be good for plumbers though.

As long as the public are fed the placebo that saving the world from plastic bags will save the world, I suppose nothing really radical will ever be done. Whether you subscribe to global warming theories or not (though the freakish weather becoming more common here was predicted 20 years ago), just the vast increase in global population makes consuming less necessary...