June 3, 2008 | posted by Michael Baxter in Climate change |

There was a time when the British public’s favourite topic of conversation was the weather.     That was in the days before TV programmes like Location, Location, Location, when people bought properties to live in, and speculation was the preserve of city types.  

Yet maybe our pre-occupation with the weather tells an economic story, too.  Because, lets face it, the weather in Blighty can be downright awful – it is chucking it down with rain as these words are typed.

But where there is weather, there is energy – and when oil is priced at current levels we need other sources of energy.

Now independent consultancy Element Energy has released a report suggesting the UK could generate the equivalent of five nuclear power stations’ worth of energy, through installing energy generating devices in homes spread across the land.

So that’s solar panels and wind turbines, and those ground source-heat pumps which are gradually beginning to emerge.

In all, Element Energy reckons nine million microgeneration units could be installed by 2020, and the carbon saving would be the equivalent of taking all the lorries and buses off UK roads. Or to put it into cold figures, 30m tonnes of CO2 would be saved – that’s around 5 per cent of the UK’s current  level of carbon emissions.

Mind you, it’s a tall order; right now there are just 100,000 such devices fitted in the UK.

But there is a snag.  In the long-term there might be a saving from having these devices, but there’s a nasty big up-front payment involved, and that’s what is putting people off.   Well, that and planning laws – both Gordon Brown and David Cameron have had their own plans to have wind turbines fitted to their homes turned down by local authorities.

Element Energy wants to see these small-scale energy generation units carrying greater government subsidies.  As things currently stand, it expects the uptake of micro generators to hit just 3 million by 2020 – well short of the 10 million it wants to see.

So it wants the government to stump up some readies to make it happen.  This could be in the form of subsidies, or perhaps soft loans – payable over 25 years at cut down interest rates.

In all, Element Energy wants £21bn made available over the next 12 years.

Of course, in the long-term renewable energy won’t merely help save the planet – it could also make us better off.   Actually, it’s quite a good investment.  If you can install energy generation units now and have them paid off by the time you retire, then there will be a major saving on your energy bills.  

So in a way, having your home fitted out with micro energy generation units is analogous to saving for your pension – maybe then the government could treat this type of home investment in the same way and make it tax deductible.

It has been claimed before that the UK is the windiest place in Europe – but what the UK isn’t, is sunny.

The snag with solar power is that unless you get an awful lot of sun it is quite inefficient – so solar power provides an opportunity for countries in North Africa and the Middle East – even for the US, but in Europe its applications are more limited.

But if the cost of solar units were to fall, then the whole thing becomes more viable.  And this brings us on to General Electric, and its subsidiary GE Energy.

Yesterday, John Krenicki, president and chief executive of GE Energy said, “I’m very optimistic about solar. I think it will be a billion-dollar business for GE sooner rather than later.”

Then he hit the nail on the head.  “If you think about the solar that’s on the market today, it’s six, seven times more expensive than wind,” Krenicki said.  Then the ray of hope was beamed out.  “Solar requires material science breakthroughs, which is something that GE is good at,” said Krenicki.

The solar energy business is being held back by the supply of silicon – whch is why GE is now talking about “Thin film” which, Krenicki said,  “has a great chance to be the lowest cost scalable form of solar power generation.”

The potential to tap into the power of the Sun is enormous – according to an article in Scientific American earlier this year: “The energy in sunlight striking the Earth for 40 minutes is equivalent to global energy consumption of a year.”

And that is why for companies like GE, beavering away on trying to make solar energy more efficient, the opportunity is literally even greater than sky high.