Brown’s (last) budget
Gordon Brown’s currently giving what is likely to be his last budget speech. The preamble in the media suggests that the environment should feature. So far the key points are:
- 50% increase in microgeneration grants from next month (so each round should last for about 2 hours instead of just 75 minutes?)
- Zero carbon homes up to £500,000 will be exempt from stamp duty until 2012
- Encouragement for a market in energy-efficiency mortgages
- Insulation and central heating grants of up to £4000 for pensioners
On transport, he’s also rejigged the vehicle excise duty bands (£400 for the most polluting vehicles). Though, no surprise, no action on aviation.
Wa-hey! An extra £600 tax-free on ISAs! Although that’s just catching up with inflation…
Even better: the basic rate of income tax is down to 20% from next April!
Edit: Here’s a link to the full budget report if you want to check the detail. For example, since the 10% band has been scraped, the tax cut will only help those making over about £18,600 (ignoring low-income support measures and only until you get to the higher bracket where national insurance changes may have an impact). Confused? The BBC explanation and calculator makes it more clear.
Generating at the gym
When I was an undergrad, I remember going to the gym with my housemate and the two of us trying to work out just how much electricity you might be able to generate from all the stairmasters, rowing machines, bikes etc. I hear you now, ’silly engineers…’, but this recent Wall Street Journal article shows that a gym in Hong Kong is taking the idea to heart. Unfortunately the article says that 13 machines give only 300 watts total, though the rowers figure you might be able to average around 200 W on an erg, which is a bit better.
So should you be trying to jury-rig your home gym to generate electricity? Probably not. Let’s compare it to a micro-wind turbine for example. A recent BBC report (Home turbines ‘lack power’) quoted the owner of a turbine (in the city) as saying it gave him 7 kWh in 3 months. So in workout equivalent, we’re talking about 35 hours of vigorous rowing or about 3 hours per week. Of course, that electricity will be pretty low quality so you’ll need some (expensive) electronics to condition and convert it into something usable, say at 80% efficiency. Overall then, you’re looking at half-an-hour of hard rowing every day of the week to give you about £2.40 of electricity each year.
Cheaper than a gym membership I suppose…
Getting the word out
I was recently invited to speak on a microgeneration panel at the Science Media Centre. The idea of these briefings is to provide the media with an opportunity to ask experts about scientific issues making the news. There’s been a lot of interest in microgeneration recently and so this particular briefing was well-attended with representatives from the Times, Mirror, Daily Mail, New Scientist, Guardian, Reuters and BBC (one each from radio, TV and online – don’t they check first to see whether someone else is going too?).
The briefing started with each of the four panel members giving a 5 minute talk on our particular areas of expertise. The follow-up questions then went on for about half an hour and focused mainly on the performance of individual microgeneration technologies, particularly microwind.
Overall I think everyone was pleased with how things turned out and the next day, articles were published in the Mail, Mirror and Times. Two things struck me about the experience:
- There was very little advocacy from the panel and we agreed that microgeneration is not a solution by itself but an important step towards a low-carbon future to be taken in conjunction with other easier and cheapier efficiency measures. Most of the articles communicated this well: the Times headline for example was “Want to save the planet? It’s your little changes that mean the most”.
- The Times also managed to condense my research accurately into one sentence: “Main effect of solar panels is in making residents more conscious of their consumption of electricity, encouraging them to alter their lifestyles”. To think that I spent the better part of two months writing an academic paper that will likely be read by a dozen people, when those 22 words will reach over 600,000 with almost the same message.
So I guess my faith in the media has been partially restored. Though incidentally when I picked up the Times I noticed that, like the Guardian, it claims to be “newspaper of the year”. Near as I can tell the Times hasn’t won in the past 12 years!
Results
This research project has now finished. The primary outputs are available below.
The complete thesis
- Behavioural responses to photovoltaic systems in the UK domestic sector – 4 MB PDF
- Abstract – one-page PDF
Short summaries
- Project description – 70 KB PDF
- PV household interviews – 0.9 MB PDF
- Industry interviews – 2.4 MB PDF
- Overall results – 1.4 MB PDF
Publications and submissions
- Keirstead, J (2007) “Behavioural responses to photovoltaic systems in the UK domestic sector”, Energy Policy. 35(8): 4128–4141
- Keirstead, J (2007) “The UK domestic photovoltaics industry and the role of central government”, Energy Policy, 35(4): 2268–2280.
- Keirstead, J (2006) “Evaluating the applicability of integrated domestic energy consumption frameworks in the UK”, Energy Policy, 34(17): 3065–3077.
- Keirstead, J., Darby, S., Boardman, B. (2006) Response to Ofgem consultation 20/06 on domestic metering innovation.
- Keirstead, J., Boardman, B. (2005) Response to Ofgem consultation 123/05 on the regulatory implications of microgeneration.
- Keirstead, J (2005) “Energy Matters: Power from the sun” Geography Review 19 (1).
- Keirstead, J (2005) “Photovoltaics in the UK domestic sector: a double-dividend?” in Proceedings of ECEEE Summer Study, 30 May–4 June 2005, Mandelieu, France.
- Keirstead, J (2005) “Household behavioural responses to PV-system monitoring devices” in Proceedings of World Renewable Energy Congress, 23 May–27 May 2005, Aberdeen, Scotland.