Hot Air And Whirling Arms: Gordon Brown And David Cameron Talk Energy
MONEY Watch – Anorak’s daily look at money news in the papers
THE GUARDIAN: “Carbon myths – Recycling and banning plastic bags are all very well, but they won’t save the planet. Instead, we should fly less, go vegan and insulate the loft, says Chris Goodall”
Politicians extol the virtues of domestic generation of electricity. The Conservatives and Liberal Democrats have committed themselves to paying us 45p a unit for electricity from the solar panels on our roof, about 10 times the wholesale price paid to the large, coal-fired Drax power station, in North Yorkshire. Microgeneration may be fashionable, but it is an astonishingly expensive way of reducing emissions. Less glamorous, but more effective, would be a plan to put a £20 note in the centre of every roll of loft insulation. British houses are the worst insulated in northern Europe and subsidised insulation would cut emissions far more cheaply than encouraging wind turbines or solar photovoltaic panels
THE TIMES front page: “Up on the roof – a power struggle”
Wind or sun? Should Britain be a land of little windmills or should we hope that global warming kicks in and our enemy the sun stops giving us cancer and instead makes enough juice for us to our TV,s PCs and SUVs?
Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Gordon Brown’s solar panels versus David Cameron’s wind turbine. It would take 100 years to recoup the £15,000 investment of Brown’s panels, and 60 years to make Cameron’s £ 3,100 turbine’s pay.
David Cameron has both panels and turbine. He may also have a hydro electric damn in the bath between the duck, the flannel and the clockwork mermaid.
Says Gordon Brown in “Did I ever think it would be fun? …well you can never get bored”: “Very quietly we have put solar panels on our home in Scotland quite some time ago. We have been operating with solar power for some time.”
Very quietly – and talked about in the pages of a national newspaper…
Posted: 13th, December 2007 | In: Money Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
