Zero Emission Project

That's a frequently asked question about solar energy. Is it worth it? How long does it take for a domestic solar installation to pay off? Can we actually harvest the sun?

Today, Zero Emission Project has officially launched the "5kSolar" campaign: 5 thousand new domestic photovoltaic solar installations in the UK by the end of 2012. This target is both technically achievable and economically feasible.

Photovoltaic solar panels generate electricity from the sunlight, which means that even on cloudy days the solar modules generate electricity. In London, for example, a typical 2.5 kWp domestic PV system generates about 2,200 kWh of electricity in a year. Solar power is much more predictable and less intermittent than wind power and it is particularly suitable for domestic micro-generation.

5,000 new PV systems on our roofs would form a 12.5 MW generation network which would generate 11 million kWh/year, with a net carbon emission reduction of 6 million kgCO2/year compared to generating the same electricity using the conventional British energy mix.

The Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames, which is the place where I live, is located in South West London. According to a study carried out by the Kingston Council (Strategic Housing Market Assessment), in 2009 the number of households in the borough was estimated to be about 64,500. The number of households in each tenure group is shown in the table below (source: Fordham Research household survey 2009).

Number of households in each tenure group in Kingston upon Thames

Considering an average annual electricity consumption of 3,300 kWh per household, the total annual residential electricity consumption in Kingston upon Thames is 212.85 GWh or 212.85 million kWh (as a real-life example, my household is formed of a working couple and a young girl and the annual electricity consumption has been just 2,153 kWh last year; thus, the 3,300 kWh estimate is well above).

If this electricity is totally generated by the standard British energy mix (coal, oil, gas, nuclear and a little wind) the amount of CO2 generated in a year is about 116 million kgCO2/year (according to the Carbon Trust, each kWh of typical British grid electricity generates 0.54522 kgCO2). That's an amazing amount for such a small corner of the world.

Oil price today has hit its highest level since the financial crisis. US crude rose to $108.74 today, while the cost of a barrel of Brent crude, sourced from the North Sea, hit $119.54.

The high oil price is due to many international factors which European countries usually are not much able to control. Continuing supply fears over the conflict in Libya and general political instability in the Middle-East region, rising demand from China and the Far East, the refusal of Iran, which currently chairs the Opec group of oil-producing nations, to support an increase in production, and so on.

Russian natural gas price is unreliable as well. Its price has been rising since the financial crisis and it is more than three times as expensive as it was 30 years ago.

One day, Mr Green decided to replace two of his old light bulbs with two energy saving light bulbs. He went down the road, passed by a shoe shop in the Croydon high street, he got into a local supermarket and bought a couple of 11W energy saving light bulbs. He was very proud about his purchase. He came back home and replaced the old bulbs with the new energy saving ones. He thought that what he did would probably help save a few pounds in his energy bill in the long term and also that he had done something good for the environment.

The day after, Mr Green and his family decided to do some shopping at the London Westfield shopping centre in Shepherd's Bush. They drove 14 miles from Croydon to the shopping centre and spent a couple of hours there. Mr Green saw a nice pair of shoes and decided to buy them. Then they drove back home. The whole trip took about three hours and 20 minutes in total (80 minutes driving and 2 hours shopping).

George Osborne's budget 2011 will hit the energy companies by introducing a Carbon Tax on electricity generation, which means a guaranteed minimum or "floor" price for carbon under Europe's emissions trading scheme of £16 a tonne in 2013, rising to £30 by 2020.

Someone will think: "this is all good news, finally something has been done to start taxing carbon emissions and this will be a move to incentivise energy companies to reduce their reliance on coal, oil and gas fuel and push them towards renewables". But will it be really this the actual result?

The harsh reality is that those who will pay will be the consumers and energy companies will continue to make exactly the same profits. Coal and gas plants will start paying the tax in 2013, based on how much carbon they emit. But what is unacceptable is that they will be allowed to pass on the cost to consumers in higher bills. Maybe even more awkward is the fact that energy companies that are currently producing electricity from nuclear reactors in Britain (e.g. EDF) will pay next to nothing because their emissions are low, but they will increase their profit from higher electricity prices, since the prices are set by an industry "cartel". This means that, in the case of EDF, consumers will pay more for no reasons.

While the world is still watching to understand the full-scale implications of the nuclear power plant disaster that happened last 11th March at the Fukushima's nuclear power plant in Japan, it is a good time to mull over the UK energy strategy for the long term future.

Nuclear power has been regarded as one of the best energy solutions to satisfy the rising British energy demand and, at the same time, to reduce carbon emissions and meet the government's targets.

As of 2010, the United Kingdom operates 19 nuclear reactors at 9 locations: Hunterstone and Torness in Scotland, Wylfa in Wales, Hartlepool, Heysham, Sizewell, Dungeness, Hinkley Point and Berkeley in England.

While the Scottish Parliament has decided that Scotland will have no new nuclear power plants and is aiming to a non-nuclear future investing heavily in renewable energy, in November 2009, the British Government identified ten nuclear sites which could accommodate new future reactors: Bradwell in Essex, Braystones, Kirksanton, Sellafield in Cumbria, Hartlepool, Heysham in Lancashire, Hinkley Point in Somerset, Oldbury in Gloucestershire, Sizewell in Suffolk, Dungeness in Kent and Wylfa in North Wales. In October 2010, the sites at Braystones, Kirksanton and Dungeness were ruled out by Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change Chris Huhne with the list of eleven potential sites reduced to eight.

One of the dreams of all of us is undoubtedly to stop paying our energy bills. Especially during winter times, this big outlay is often unbearable.

The reason why we need to pay so much is because we have to buy at least two things we can’t do without: gas for the heat in winter and electricity to lighten our nights and to run our essential appliances such as a fridge-freezer and a washing machine.

But, do we really need to buy gas and electricity? Of course we do, as long as our homes are not designed and built much, much better. For the reduction and even the elimination of gas consumption, I suggest the reading of the following articles: “How to give British houses their real value and reduce their carbon emission?” and “The energy bill” where the problem of heating old leaky houses is addressed extensively.

In this article I want to find out whether there is a way of reducing and eventually terminating our eternal dependency on energy companies.

Obviously, the first thing we need to do is reducing as much as possible our domestic electricity consumption by a responsible use of it and by switching to low energy consumption light bulbs and appliances. After we have managed to reduce to minimum our household electricity demand, we can start thinking how we can slowly but continuously pulling the electric plug off the socket of our electricity provider.

What we need to do is clear: we need to generate on-site the amount of electricity that we need throughout the year. One possible source for this generation is of course the sun.

The question is: do we really need to install a grid-tie photovoltaic solar system, or can we go totally off-grid? What is best in the short and long term?

In the UK, Local Authorities have very tight budgets. The central government has made huge spending cuts to repay a spiralling public debt and the public sector is expected to pay the biggest toll.

Councils blame the central government, cry out for money and proclaim that they can’t afford to pay for their basic services: libraries, public schools and social services are all under the axe of spending cuts.

Is it all that miserable and gloomy out there? Is it the right attitude to just sit down and wait, begging for money that will never come in the foreseeable future?  Can Councils not find a solution to save money in a smart way while contributing towards cleaner towns at the same time?

Does anyone know how much rubbish is accumulated and buried outside London? The picture above shows the locations of both all the historic and active landfill sites around the British capital.

Landfill in the UK is currently recognised as the Best Practicable Environmental Option (BPEO) for the disposal of certain waste types. This is opposed to incineration for example, which is another way of getting rid of waste.

The question is the following: how many active and historic landfills do we have in the UK? The Environment Agency keeps a database of all the landfill sites, and anyone can browse the EA’s website and see whether there is a pile of rubbish just few miles away from our homes. However, what the majority of the British population doesn’t know is how the historic landfills are currently managed and whether something useful has been done to regenerate or use these places in a sensible way.