Election manifesto roundup on carbon, energy and the climate

[Ed Davies]

https://secrhub.co.uk/election-roundup-on-carbon-energy-climate/

 

Handy reference, I suppose.

[SteamyTea]

20 minutes ago, Ed Davies said:

Handy reference, I suppose.

Or pipe dreams.

I see the LDs what to spend £6bn on insulation and low carbon heating.  Wish I could sort my house out for £200 (assuming spread evenly over 30 million homes).

I think UKIP have the most realistic expectations of what is going to happen in the next parliamentary term.

 

Tim Hartford did a bit on the Beeb.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000bx15

and

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000c4pc

 

Edited December 10, 2019 by SteamyTea

[Ed Davies]

46 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

Or pipe dreams.

 

Indeed, looking at how much sense they make helps give an idea if they're serious or not. However, more detail is needed. E.g, as you say £6 billion on insulation, etc, won't go far if directly spent on individual houses but if it goes into R&D and administrative and financial changes to make insulation more attractive then perhaps it could kickstart things.

[SteamyTea]

2 minutes ago, Ed Davies said:

administrative and financial changes

Only if they learnt from all the last schemes we have had.

I think if councils could nominate areas of land that could be used for solar or wind farms and DNOs gave access to connection possibilities, there would be less mucking about at the beginning.

But what we will end up with is the usual over complicated, confusing and contrary system that seems set up to stop things.

[scottishjohn]

2 hours ago, SteamyTea said:

I think if councils could nominate areas of land that could be used for solar or wind farms and DNOs gave access to connection possibilities,

good idea ,but convincing DNO,s to spend money on up grading grids to take power is the big hold back at this time 

and the reason why there are not more solar farms --they expect farm developer to pay to upgrade grid to take the power they make -that kills it  most times

I have already come across that hurdle with my 30 acre seaside plot --ideal for solar --but until dno upgrade network --its a non starter--so could be 5 years before it gets upgraded  as all spare capacity has been sucked up by wind turbines  already .

power companies have too much vested interests elsewhere - not suprising as most are EU based companies and its EU based companies that make and build the wind farms

 

that certainly could change if we go hard brexit with right rules on whgo can build such things in uk 

 

EG wholly owned UK companies,building them in UK and  paying UK taxes

[eekoh]

I think we'll struggle to develop really good systems designed to improve service for consumers or fully address 'green' objectives without either nationalised power generation or incredibly strict regulation, which the Conservative government seems reluctant to do.

I'm not wholly against privatisation (and we're kind of stuck with it for the foreseeable future anyway) but in a free market its inevitable that private companies driven by profit will only do the minimum required to meet their service level agreements or political/legal obligations.

[SteamyTea]

18 minutes ago, eekoh said:

but in a free market its inevitable that private companies driven by profit will only do the minimum required to meet their service level agreements or political/legal obligations.

Isn't that what nationalised industries did too.  Then went on strike every few weeks.

[eekoh]

Probably. Either strategy needs effective government regulation to keep the focus on quality of service & infrastructure rather than the vested interests of shareholders or union politics. Also I think if employees feel like they’re being treated fairly and not exploited or worked to death to fund ‘fatcat’ bosses they'd be less likely to form militant unions.