Sunday
May152011
by 
Bishop Hill
Bishop Hill UKCIP defunded
May 15, 2011 Climate: Parliament Climate: WG2 From the Oxford Mail:
CLIMATE change experts working in Oxford fear their jobs could be lost after funding was cut by the Government.
The UK Climate Impact Programme, set up in Oxford 13 years ago, currently receives £1m a year from the Department of the Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra).
The programme, part of the university’s Environmental Change Institute, has been told that there will be no more Government support from September.
(H/T DaveB)
Reader Comments (56)
BBD - well, I guess it does provide some small benefit to tenants to alleviate their rising costs of fuel due to that daft levy we're all paying. What horrifies me is that because of the Climate Change Act all councils are having to write policies to meet targets and however much councillors rail against the ridiculousness of it, officers merely hold up their hands and explain that they have to do this because Government says so. Other officers, specifically employed as climate change officers, are embracing the green mantra and are desperate to have us all endorse their sanctimonious preachings. I heard yesterday that our council area has the lowest number of renewable schemes in the region and the greatest increase in emissions (note to self: must get hold of data that proves this) - can you imagine how excited those officers are to change this? Rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of secure jobs for the next umpteen years. Politically, it is a nightmare because the LibDims will make mincemeat of any scepticism, duly aided and abetted by the liberally minded press.
Best of luck with your fight, but I won't hold my breath. Are you in a conservation area? AONB? What do the tenancy agreements say about the landlord's right to use the roof for commercial purposes? Have you sought counsel's opinion or do you not have sufficient funds? Are you a lone voice?
biddyb
The self-fuelling nature of the whole emissions-reduction farce is indeed terrifying. And catnip for certain self-serving elements of local government and self-serving local activists. We have both here – and one major activist is now a Lib Dem councillor elected on the back of his carbon activism with lashings of help from the county rag. This was not a pretty sight.
Nor does it bode well for local democracy, but that’s another rant.
WRT to the increased emissions claim, your council – like most – probably accesses the REAP Environmental Accounting data produced by the Stockholm Environmental Institute at the University of York – and funded by the WWF:
http://resource-accounting.org.uk/
It’s a farrago of assumptive, experimental modelling which is scientifically weightless (no corroborative studies exist) and invariable presented as fact on a par with the Laws of Thermodynamics.
As for the SPV scheme:
The city is not within a conservation area (although it contains them) and the public housing proposed as the foundations for our wonderful private subsidy farm is not protected.
Ditto ANOB. No special pleading, unfortunately. I think that the council is entirely entitled to cut whatever deal it likes over leasing the roofs – it owns them, after all.
There are some members of the Conservative group within the council who oppose the scheme – or are at least unconvinced of its merits, but I am the only private citizen actively opposing it. Probably because not many people really understand what is going on.
I have not sought legal counsel because nobody – including the council – seems clear about what is going on. And in that, lies some hope.
For example, the Head of Landlord Services recently had this to say:
There sounds like there is rather a lot to do if this scheme is going to be finalised and approved before 01 August when the old FITs are reduced. Mind you, that may not actually affect this scheme – everything depends on whether it can successfully pass off each household as separate (and claim the huge 43.3p/kWh FIT) while in reality harvesting the total FIT for all households collectively.
BBD - interesting that they are looking for a partner to provide legal and technical support. I would have thought that the legal hurdle is the problematic one to jump first. Presumably, council tenants have exclusive occupation of their homes and the right of quiet enjoyment, so I wonder how the council can give that away without the agreement of the tenants. I can't say I would be too happy with some solar panel company traipsing over my garden and putting ladders up to my roof, tinkering with my electricity supply box in the house (or are they all outside now) as and when they felt like it to install and then repair and maintain the damn things, even with a £100 of electricity thrown in to sugar the pill. I can just imagine the arguments that will break out when there is some damage to a roof over who is responsible; the sort of argument that will drag on for years; meanwhile the tenant continues to live in a house with water penetrating the roof and causing untold damage and misery. A bit of scaremongering required to frighten the tenants and any fence-sitting councillors............
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the scheme goes off the boil after 1st August when the FIT are reduced. Mind you, I suspect that the climate change officers will be hell bent on making sure it does go through however much the head of landlord services may have reservations.
There was an article in a sunday paper about solar panels: "Free solar panel installation is the other possible solution for those who would like to save something off their energy bill but do not have the money to pay the start-up costs. Companies offering this will receive the income from the generation and export tariffs from your panels, while you benefit from reduced energy bills."
"According to the Energy Saving Trust, the free panels will save you about £100 a year at present, although this will rise as energy costs go up. The more you are at home, using electricity, the more you will benefit, since the return on any energy sold to the grid will not be passed on to you."
I am not sure I understand this completely. How come free panels will only "save" you £100 per annum. Surely, you are saving the cost of all the energy that is generated from the panels and the company/installers only get any excess that is fed into the grid, which is implied by the comment that you will benefit more if you are at home more, using electricity? It all smells a little suspect to me. Perhaps the council should be installing day-storage heaters that can be fed from the PV panels, thus benefitting the tenants who go out to work at a time when the panels are producing something.
Needless to say, during the winter when it's colder and we require more heating and electricity to brighten the long, cold and dark days, the panels will be generating less electricity. Oh wait, any shortfall in power is going to be made up by wind turbines. Yeah! That's the solution.
I wish Oxbridge Prat would come back to me about his bills/consumption during the year; I'd love to see how much electricity is actually generated and whether the claims from the PV suppliers are accurate.
The article goes on to say that many people's roofs are not right for solar panels. The requirements are "particularly stringent if you are going for a free system, where you will need to have an unshaded, south-facing roof. For your own system you may get away with a roof that faces east or west [but presumably your return will drop], and there should be no shading from trees." BBD - check out the alignment of all your council houses!
biddyb
First - you must remember that such is the madness of the FIT scheme that the owner of the panels gets the full subsidy for the entire amount of electricity they generate per year irrespective of how much you do or do not use.
£100 or so a year is about the average saving you might expect when you convert the actual amount of SPV electricity you used into real-world electricity price equivalents (~11p/kWh). Very roughly, the proportions of projected income p/a are:
FIT (@43.3p/kWh) £1000
Saving on electricity bill £100 - £125
(Sale of unused capacity to grid - £40 - also retained by the corporate owner of the panels)
You can see where the money is! And why it's such a total scam really. Not forgetting that the electricity companies recoup the cost imposed on them by the FIT system by increasing everyone's energy bills. The elderly, the disabled, low-income families - all get hit hardest. It's a genuinely wretched policy mistake.
We have a chap locally who has a PV company and is about to place gooodness-knows how many PV panels on the roof of a large new outbuilding. The house and outbuildings are listed but the village are not complaining as they want to show their geen credentials and the planners, although concerned about the size of the outbuilding, have made no comment about the PV panels. Given that he will supply the panels to himself at cost and I imagine there will be at least 40 panels, he will be raking it in. No wonder he was so desperate to get his application through and I expect the new building will go up in record time in order to get those panels operational before 1st August.
As you say, BBD, it is a policy error of indescribable magnitude and all parties (political) should be ashamed of it and rectify the unfairness of it immediately.
biddyb
Yup, he's a scammer.
This sort of thing got completely out of hand in Spain and Germany, and our government learned exactly nothing from those very visible policy failures.
Instead, all the talk was (and still is) of Germany and Spain's admirable championing of renewables. It's all utter rubbish of course, and the cost to the citizens of both countries was, is and will continue to be, enormous.