To the greens who accuse me of treachery I say this: we do not have a moral obligation to support all forms of renewable energy, however inefficient and expensive they may be. We do have a moral obligation not to be blinded by sentiment. We owe it to the public, and to our credibility, to support the schemes which work, fairly and cheaply, and reject the schemes which cost a fortune and make no difference.
George Monbiot continues to think critically about renewables subsidies — such as the UK feed-in tariffs for solar PV. See also A Great Green Rip-Off
The feed-in tariffs about to be introduced here are extortionate, useless and deeply regressive.
Those who hate environmentalism have spent years looking for the definitive example of a great green rip-off. Finally it arrives and no one notices. The government is about to shift £8.6bn from the poor to the middle classes. It expects a loss on this scheme of £8.2bn, or 95%(1). Yet the media is silent. The opposition urges only that the scam should be expanded.
On April 1st the government introduces its feed-in tariffs. These oblige electricity companies to pay people for the power they produce at home. The money will come from their customers, in the form of higher bills. It would make sense, if we didn’t know that the technologies the scheme will reward are comically inefficient.
(…) We don’t need to guess the results: the German government made the same mistake ten years ago. By 2006 its generous feed-in tariffs had stimulated 230,000 solar roofs, at a cost of E1.2bn. Their total contribution to the country’s electricity supply was 0.4%(10). Their total contribution to carbon savings, as a paper in the journal Energy Policy points out, is zero(11). This is because Germany, like the UK, belongs to the European Emissions Trading Scheme. Any savings made by feed-in tariffs permit other industries to raise their emissions. Either the trading scheme works, in which case the tariffs are pointless, or it doesn’t, in which case it needs to be overhauled. The government can’t have it both ways.
A week ago the German government decided sharply to reduce the tariff it pays for solar PV, on the grounds that it’s a waste of money(12). Just as the Germans have begun to abandon their monumental mistake, we are about to repeat it.
Buying a solar panel is now the best investment a householder can make. The tariffs will deliver a return of between 5-8% a year, which is both index-linked (making a nominal return of 7-10%(13)) and tax free(14). The payback is guaranteed for 25 years(15). If you own a house and can afford the investment, you’d be crazy not to cash in. If you don’t and can’t you must sit and watch your money being used to pay for someone else’s fashion accessory.
Monbiot is slowly coming around to see that nuclear power is one of the best real-world solutions to climate change. He needs to invest in some more homework though – he still doesn’t realize that “nuclear waste” is unused fuel.
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