EmailWhen I first started this site, I spent some time trying to find similar sites on Google. After all if someone was already writing about microgeneration, it would be better if I complemented their work by offering something new, rather than just duplicating content.
I wasn’t terribly successful at first. There was a brief article on the German feed-in tariff at Earthscan’s website (the publishers) and some microgeneration related news items at Sustainablog and a renewable energy blog, both talking about Greenpeace’s decentralised generation vision. The blog tracking service Technorati turns up a number of microgeneration hits, but again almost all of the results seemed to be one-off posts and, more importantly, US-centric.
Today though I got a trackback on the ‘What is microgeneration?’ post from micro-generator.com. It’s also based in the UK so it’s nice to know that the site is useful and that there are others scanning the news and keeping an eye open for interesting microgeneration news. For example, it reminded me that I completely forgot to mention It’s Not Easy Being Green programme on BBC2. Which, as an aside, is both entertaining and thought provoking. The main message seems to be that, even if you’ve got a ten acre spread in Cornwall and a river running through your backyard for microhydro, it’s actually quite hard being green!
The problem with the internet these days is that it takes no time at all for a topic to spawn a few small sites and then morph into a completely overwhelming deluge of information. Blogs on microgeneration seem to be no exception and I think it will only be a matter of time before junk ad-sites and ‘I found this cool link. The end.’-type articles become prolific. Perhaps then, it’s a good time to reassess the progress I’ve made on this site since its launch. Having looked back through the posts so far, I’ve concluded that Small is Beautiful is at its best when it provides that extra bit of insight and analysis, teasing out both the simplifications of mass media and the complications of policy debates. So amid the growing numbers of microgen sites, I’m going to continue writing, but try to provide that extra little bit to make this site a valuable and trustworthy resource for those with a keen interest in microgeneration issues.