Small is beautiful

WillParbury Tue Sep 25, 2007 at 04:56:03 PM GMT Print-friendly version Facebook

Will Parbury discusses the benefits of decentralised energy



<h2> It must have been difficult writing Gordon’s first speech to party conference as Prime Minister. All that dead air to fill without mentioning the date of the next general election. Then there is the need to find some new policy announcement.  This time the environment has benefited from the party conference tradition as the number of new “eco-towns” the government is set to see built doubles to 10. It appears there is some work to go on the fine details of what these towns with “low and zero emission homes” will look like. A key test of actually how green these eco towns are will be the extent to which they use environmentally friendly forms of  decentralised energy.

What is decentralised energy?

</h2>
It’s environmentally friendly energy that is locally produced to where it will be used. It actually covers a fairly wide variety of renewable technologies from solar panels on the school roofs, to windmills on houseboats, to geothermal boreholes at Buckingham palace or micro hydroelectricity

What is wrong with the centralised electricity system we have at the moment?

Actually lots. Only 22% of the energy input into the electricity system is actually used, The rest is lost during inefficient generation, transmission over vast distances through the national grid or in domestic energy inefficiency. When it comes to coal or gas powered power stations this represents a terrible waste of a finite natural resource.

The current system engenders a culture of energy passivity amongst the population. We just pay the bill when it arrives or even better leave it to Direct Debit. It puts power in the hands of large energy companies rather than empowering the consumer to think about the energy they use.

The technology used in centralised generation tends to be old hat and damaging to environment. Coal, gas, nuclear all have their problems. Environmental damage from the former two and nuclear waste that last centuries. Imagine if the Romans had had nuclear we would still be clearing up after them. Not intergenerational justice in my book.

Centralised electricity systems are also much more vulnerable to disruption in a variety of forms. I still don’t think that we are taking the threat of a truck bomb or plane attacking a nuclear power station seriously enough. It is also inherent in a centralised system that adverse weather events, which with global warming will increase in frequency, cause more damage when power-lines supplying thousands of homes can be brought down in one go.

Gas makes up 39% of our primary energy and oil 35%. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, UAE, Russia and Algeria are amongst the countries that are the world’s biggest producers of oil and gas. It can hardly be beneficial to our national interest to be reliant for a very significant section of our energy supplies from countries which have a serious track record of authoritarianism, war, terrorism and human rights abuse.

What are the benefits of changing to decentralised energy?

More on http://parburypolitica.wordpress.com/



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Small is beautiful | 4 comments (4 topical)

Re: Small is beautiful (#1)

by Radford Mann on Wed Sep 26, 2007 at 10:28:15 AM GMT

This is the sort of thing that Alan Simpson has been advocating for years, in addition to promoting the Energy Feed-in Tarrif as seen in many other European countries. The problem we have in this country is that we have a civil sevice and political leaders wedded to 'big science' and in energy that means nuclear.


Re: Small is beautiful (#2)

by WillParbury on Wed Sep 26, 2007 at 01:38:18 PM GMT

Can't say that I intended to align myself with the campaign group!

Not sure about your nuclear argument but it seems strange to me given the severity of the climate threat that we seem to have gone bung renewables £50m to sush them up and then go headlong for nuclear.  


[ Parent ]

Re: Small is beautiful (#4)

by SocialistAC on Wed Oct 03, 2007 at 06:59:01 PM GMT

Alan Simpson made a speech at a fringe meeting at last week's conference about decentralised energy. His view is that we should be copying Germany's 'eco cities' model, and according to him, we could do relatively easily and cheaply.


[ Parent ]

Re: Small is beautiful (#3)

by rwendland on Mon Oct 01, 2007 at 12:42:21 AM GMT

I'm all for promoting Combined Heat and Power (CHP) and wind, but we have to stay grounded with the facts.

The statement "Centralised electricity systems are also much more vulnerable to disruption in a variety of forms" is completely misleading. Since we've had a National Grid power supply has been much more reliable for the obvious reason that plant failure and maintenance-downtime can be covered by distant plant. Before we had the grid each town needed a large amount of spare capacity to cover for failure/maintenance, or run many smaller, lower thermal efficient, plants.

The statement about electrical distribution losses is also misleading. Most of the distribution losses are in the local low-voltage distribution, not in the high-voltage national grid. Distribution losses are about 8%, but only 2.5% of that is in the National Grid.

And of course a National Grid is essential to use our best wind resources for power, which are in Scotland or offshore, and to use wave/tidal power.


Small is beautiful | 4 comments (4 topical)