Microgeneration: the spin - 3 comments

The Register has a new article that cuts through a lot of the misleading claims about microgeneration, which many have seen as a cheap and efficient way to cut emissions, and as an alternative to developing new nuclear facilities.

The Guardian, amongst others, has put a very favourable spin upon the Department for Business, Energy and Regulatory Reform's recent report. The Conservatives back microgeneration (warning: PDF file), naturally, it being seen as the warm, fluffy option. See also this. On our side, John McDonnell MP is banging the drum too (my emphasis):

When Labour backbenchers were pressing to include in this legislation early action to introduce feed-in tariffs for altenative energy produced by homes and community organisations the Government refused to co-operate and instead offered yet another consultation over the coming year, delaying the whole process by at least another year and possibly longer. In Germany and other European countries the introduction of feed in tariffs has resulted in a dramatic increase in alternative energy production.

The Register, though, is scathing:

[...] This subsidy plan would continue to cost the taxpayer £5.5bn each year forever, according to the report - that's as much as we currently spend on defence procurement, or enough money to buy 55 terawatt-hours of electricity every year at consumer prices, well over 15 per cent of the national leccy bill. And of course, we'd all still be paying our normal energy bills as well, and we'd still have done nothing to clean up the other 99 per cent of our energy usage.

By comparison, a nuclear power station half again as big as Sizewell B is said by French makers EDF to cost about £2bn and by most other people to cost about £3bn. Four billion quid's worth of nuke stations would produce as much low-to-zero-carbon electricity as the headline microgen plan, which would cost conservatively five times as much just in subsidies - forget about the costs to the users. Even given swingeing regulatory, maintenance, staffing, decommissioning and waste-management costs (plus some pocket change for fuel) it's not surprising that the nuclear energy industry - unlike the microgeneration one - does not consider that it needs any subsidy at all in the UK. [...]

And it gets worse. If grid electricity can be decarbonised even partially - by building wind farms or nuclear stations, say - the eco benefits of microgeneration disappear. We would find ourselves subsidising people to spew carbon unnecessarily, in fact. The report shows quite clearly that if the carbon burden of grid power can be halved, then burning gas in the home becomes a very eco-unfriendly thing to do, no matter how cunning the machinery used. Subsidies for CHP et al would then be highly un-green, as they would actually drive up carbon emissions rather than reduce them. Only heat-pumps, and perhaps some biomass kit, would be eco-worthwhile if grid electricity were less dirty.

It's worth reading the whole thing.

I don't have any ideological preference in favour of nuclear power, but it's beholden upon those who have an ideological, or opportunistic, opposition to it, to do some research before jumping on any bandwagon that seems to be travelling in the other direction.