solar so good

It was odd last week to have two Viva Lewes columns with opposing views about solar pv, with me singing its praises and The Trouble With feeling quite grumpy about it. At the risk of boring some readers, I’d like to address TTW’s concerns one by one.

Our demand for electricity is in the winter, when the sun shines less.
Sorry, but this is irrelevant. Every kilowatt hour of electricity produced by renewable energy, summer or winter, is a kilowatt hour not produced by fossil fuels. Both CAT’s Zero Carbon Britain and David McKay’s excellent online book Sustainable Energy without the Hot Air outline how Britain can power itself renewably through a spread of technologies, including solar photovoltaics (pv).

Solar PV is too expensive.
Partly because of feed in tariffs (FITs) being taken up with gusto in 40 other countries, prices are falling, fast. Industry statistics show that the price of modules has halved in the last ten years with most of that drop in the last three years (see graph here). There are plenty of developments documented in the technical press that ensure there will be further drops as long as the market keeps growing. Even without FITS, solar pv is becoming affordable: on a good, medium sized roof a 3kW system can be installed for £10,000. Given industry projections for the cost of electricity, the payback for that is 18 years. The cost of electricity is rising by 6% a year (the average over the last 10 years) and set to rise faster, as fossil fuels deplete.

The rest of us subsidise the Feed in Tariffs.
The total cost to date of the FITs has been less than 1p a month to domestic bills and meanwhile thousands of new green jobs have been created along with tax and national insurance income to the government. In fact the inverse is true: those people who continue to use electricity from fossil fuels are being subsidized by those of us who use renewable energy. The cost of climate change is enormous; according to the influential Stern Report, the financial cost to society of not going renewable is far greater than the investment costs of renewables. FITs are a way of shifting costs to the polluters.

We should spend the money on alternatives to fossil fuels.
To get off fossil fuels we need to invest in a spread of renewable technologies, including solar pv, according to the sources sited at the beginning. If TTW is talking nuclear, David McKay cites a 2008 statistic of the cost of simply decommissioning – let alone building - UK’s nuclear power stations as up to £73 billion or £1200 a person. Out of the Department of Energy and Climate change budget of £3 billion and falling, nuclear decommissioning alone will cost £850 million this year, £950 million next year and £1.1billion the year after. And that’s just the financial cost.

Is shareholding in a local solar power station a good bet?
Well, TTW, that’s up to you to decide. Myself, I am investing (£250) not just because of the money but because it’s something I want to help make happen. If you want to find out more, the full share documents will be issued at Ovesco’s launch of the share offer next Tuesday 19 April, 7-9pm at Lewes Town Hall. Anyone’s welcome, investors or not, to the event, which will include an Energy Question Time and free refreshments. There’s an incredible energy revolution beginning here and I’m proud to be part of it.

the sun is up, the sky is blue

...and the solar panels on my roof are chugging away – or would be if they had moving parts, generating just under 2 kilowatt hours peak, which is why we bung on the washing and cook the weekly oatcakes because all that electricity is free to use. The Feed In Tariffs of 41p per kilowatt hour mean that our roof is earning us about £900 a year, making the payback period for the panels about 12 years based on their cost of £11,000. 

More importantly for us, every kilowatt of electricity generated by the sun means we avoid burning the same amount of fossil fuels, which create CO2 emissions, which… as we know …  is a serious problem for our planet. When I read research such as yesterday’s – that rapid artic warming is likely to affect the gulf steam, which keeps our land temperate – I am even more committed to creating a renewable future in order to avoid the horrorstories that are already being created by climate change.

Nuff said. 

Third and perhaps more important of all is that oil and gas prices are creeping inexorably upwards and free electricity from the sun creates personal and collective resilience – if enough of us do enough things (including HMG, ahem) we’ll be looking at a clean future powered by the elements.  

Dear Prudence open up your eyes

Dear Prudence see the sunny skies

The wind is low, the birds will sing

That you are part of everything

Dear Prudence won't you open up your eyes?

Walking around Lewes I cannot understand why more residents don’t invest in solar pv. Here might be some reasons and my responses. ‘I don’t own my own roof’: ask your landlord to invest in them. ‘I don’t have the cash’: see if you can increase your mortgage or take out a loan subsidised by Lewes District Council from South Coast Money Line. The FITs will more than cover the loan repayment. ‘The planning conservation officer says he will recommend refusal’: I say a polite ‘Bull’. Unless you are living in a listed buiding, don’t be bullied by these council officers whose job it is to be conservative; bung in the application and ask your local councillor to ask it to be referred to the planning committee. All applications put to them so far have gone ahead. And tell them that you don’t need to pay for the planning application because we are in an Article 4 Direction. Contact me if you want some free advice. 

Finally, if you don’t have a south facing roof but want to invest in power from the sun, consider getting on board with Ovesco’s share offer to pay for Britain’s first solar power station – another fabulous Lewes first.  

Dear Prudence, won't you come out to play

Dear Prudence, greet the brand new day

The sun is up, the sky is blue

It's beautiful and so are you

Dear Prudence won't you come out to play?

revolution

Last week’s march in London was a blast. Nearly half a million protesting about growing inequalities caused by the cuts to public services, with the backdrop of bonuses for the bailed out bankers and unopposed tax evasion. Such a sense of power and determination.

I went up with a gang from UKUncut, who have their supporters here in Lewes. Our home-grown Lewes Four, who were arrested for peacefully protesting outside Boots a month ago, are themselves going to Eastbourne police station tonight to face charges. Though I truly doubt the police has a good reason to charge them. Myself, I am lodging an official complaint with Sussex Police and will also take legal action for my own small arrest and subsequent ‘dearrest’for not giving my name during the same protest.

Far from being the violent anarchists portrayed by some of the media, UK Uncut were peacefully making their cause known up and down Oxford Street by ‘baling in’ tax evaders and banks, ie conducting sit-ins. The finale was a mass occupation of Fortnum and Mason, who are, apparently, themselves tax evaders. You’d think they could afford to pay towards the country’s coffers. Though, sadly, the arrest of the Fortnum and Mason 138 may signal the end to peaceful protest, says solicitor Matt Foot.

If you are reading this and wondering why the lady doth protest too much? I can only say, isn’t it totally obvious that we need to stand up for what we believe in and if necessary make a scene, ideally as playfully and adventurously as possible?

Do please watch this very brilliant and funny video from Rap News Revolution for some context....

domestic extremists

I watched the rushes this week of a new film Just Do It, following the lives of some of the climate protesters who are mostly young but who include the awesome Lewes resident Marina Pepper. It’s a pretty moving story of people who literally put their bodies in the way and who have managed to help stop such climate polluters as Kingsnorth power station and Heathrow’s third runway. These activists call themselves domestic extremists, and their clear aim is to help preserve life on earth.

One of the interesting themes from the film is the realisation that we have to tackle climate change at its source, and that is our industrial growth society and the institutions that perpetuate it: corporations and banks and governments that do not regulate and tax them sufficiently. You don’t have to be an anarchist to be saying that now: mainstream institutions such as nef, the Bank of England and the recently CEO of pharmaceutical Glaxo Kline agree that the system isn’t working. Which is why I will be to march this Saturday with UK Uncut - taking the 8.07 to meet up at 8.30 in Brighton and 11 in Kennington tube. Uk Uncut is a very new movement playfully occupying high street corporate and banks to demand that corporations stop evading paying their taxes. We’ll probably all end up on Oxford Street.

I remember Joanna Macy’s story about there being three types of action necessary for humans who wish to support the Great Turning (away from the industrial growth society to the life sustaining society). Holding actions – such as those of UkUncut, Plane Stupid and Climate Camp, trying to prevent further damage to life. New realities - and the Transition Town movement is firmly in this camp by creating parallel public infrastructure. And change of consciousness.

The latter can be a problem as I notice it’s an easy excuse for some of my spiritual pals not to change their behaviour – ie trusting in God without tying up their camel.

But at any one time, it’s good to be wholeheartedly and realistically involved in any one of the above – after all, what are we here for if not to be co-creators of our world?

where now?

The Lewes Pound CIC (Community Interest Company) held its first AGM last night during which director Patrick Crawford talked us through the story of the Lewes Pound, right from the first small article in the Argus, through the spectacular launch, during the strange week in Septemebr 2008 when Lehman Brothers collapsed and the rest of the financial world seemed on the brink of collapse, and CNN had regular updates going out all over the world: Lewes launches its own currency.

A week later, and all 10,000 of the Lewes Pounds printed had been bought and swiftly put up on people's fridges and scattered around as souvenirs. Totally the opposite of the group's plan: to create a workable currency and to keep money circulating locally. The following week, the sold-out Lewes Pounds were selling on ebay for £30 a pop, amid rumours that the whole exercise was just to make money.

After the first year, about 150 traders were interviewed by a university researcher and about half said that it had made no difference to their business and the other half said that more people had come into their shops. The traders encouraged the Lewes Pound group to print higher denominations, which entailed another fabulous launch at Harvey's Depot, complete with pig roast, loads of stalls and even a specially written song.

Now, nearly 2 1/2 years on, circulation of the Lewes Pound has significantly slowed. Recently-polled traders agree, but are mostly still very supportive of the idea and keen to see it adapted or at least for other ideas to be developed to support the local economy.

The annual accounts were presented by the accountants Knill James, who'd done a lot of pro bono work and said they'd been quite chuffed to create the first annual accounts of a British local currency in well over a century. £5,000 this year of the £12,000 leaked funds had been set aside for a local project to reduce carbon and increase resilience but the CIC's call out for proposals had a meagre response.So the five grand will be put in the care of the Sussex Community Foundation until a suitable cause is identified.

The second part of the evening was a World Cafe session with three questions in which people were encouraged to discuss some of the issues around the Lewes Pound. Basically: What are our values? What's our vision? Where can we take the Lewes Pound next? Some really juicy ideas came out of the session, including the idea of a Lewes lottery; that it be used as a token; that it await a crash and be put into real use; that it transform into electronic form; that the council accept it for taxes; that it help promote development of new social enterprises; that it work with a credit union or issue microcredit. One thing was clear: it was so good to disuss these issues openly, though many more people should have been at the meeting to discuss the future of OUR money.

be prepared

One of the most interesting outcomes of the revolutions in the Middle East is what that is doing to oil prices. Nomura merchant bank’s commodity team writes that crude oil prices could double to over $220 a barrel causing an oil crisis like that of the 1970s.

Jeremy Leggett, my favourite oil commentator, also writes that we’re entering a time of consequences, that with peak oil now a prospective above-ground situation as well as a below-ground.

‘Nobody – whether individual, household, community, city, government or business – can responsibly afford simply to hope for a comfortable outcome on the peak-oil risk-issue any longer. We all need to be drawing up contingency plans, and taking whatever proactive measures we can.

‘Not all the potential outcomes of this latest human drama are negative. There is upside potential for a road to renaissance beyond, including in Saudi Arabia. But we will be challenged, and we will all need to play our parts in holding society together in the tough times ahead. The more proactive we are, obviously, the softer the landing, and the quicker we can engineer the road to renaissance.’ 

With so much dire news coming our way – including today’s coverage of a UN report of global decline of honeybees – I actually welcome the breakdown of a way of being – caused entirely by the human race - that no longer serves us (and probably never did). The question is, are we facing renaissance – rapid evolution - or revolution? One could be conscious and willing. The other could be bloody, with many losers.

baby, it's cold outside

So. Fucking February is over (our family swears our way through the month) and with luck this week is the last of the cold snaps before the spring bursts through, as it always does in March. But I do feel a little nostalgic this year for the winter behind me. It’s been a good one, maybe because I’ve been so close to it and have had to work more creatively this year for my comforts instead of simply avoiding discomfort.

We’ve had the central heating on only briefly at the beginning and end of the day (for the kids’ sake, really) and since we work from home have had to bundle ourselves up in rugs, hot water bottles, socks, slippers, hats, padded jackets and all that jazz when working on computers. Beds piled high with blankets at night... Keeping the wood burner fed has in itself kept us warm, as have twice-weekly forays to the allotment. And hot soups at lunchtime have stoked the fires too.

I recently read a fascinating article that describes the body itself as a heating system. Although we talk so much about insulating our houses these days we focus very little on keeping heat in our bodies through good clothing. The article goes into detail about the kinds of clothes we need to use to keep our skin temperature at a comfortable 32-33 degrees. Two layers of long thermal underwear under normal clothes can reduce the need for space heating by 80%, for example.

The only problem with longjohns, I have found, is that as soon as I start moving about and generating internal heat through exercise, I need to take those layers off. And if they’re near the skin, it involves an entire strip, in the cold. It has been quite hilarious this winter turning up to Transition meetings in an overheated pub room and for half the hardy attendees to have to strip off to their undergarments.

Perhaps this sounds a bit holy or poverty-minded to some people, and I have had varieties of sneer-back about this kind of talk. Honestly, I'm not entirely sure that this is the way to go. Maybe it's true what some people say: 'they' will invent some kind of infinte clean fuel. Or, since 'they' don't seem worried, we don't need to do anything yet. I don't know why I actually enjoy pushing my comfort edge. Maybe it's because when I reach the edge, I realise that I am still at ease, still happy and playful in my own domain and maybe that makes me feel less fearful of a future with less, and more excited about all the new creative possiblities it brings.