Government Energy Policy

While listenining to the news this morning, it was announced that the government was going to release yet another white paper on energy policy, with yet more incentives for renewables, after comments by the Royal Academy. But there is one thing lacking from all of the talk right now which the government could easily implement, and would have a big effect on how much energy we use. It could use the building codes to mandate the use of renewable energy.

I'm not talking windmills here - the mini windmills which were fashionable a couple of years ago and which David Cameron had fitted to his house are too small to be useful, and generate more CO2 during manufacture than they are every likely to save during their lifetime. What I am referring to is either underground earth heating or solar water heaters, which should be fitted to each new house/building constructed.

A typical solar water heating installation cost is something like £5000 or more, but most of this cost is the cost of retrofitting it to an existing building, and is the cost of labour for roofing and plumbing. Strip these costs out, because you would now be fitting the systems during construction and they can be planned in, and the costs would be much lower, and by mandating their use (with the resulting increase in numbers), economies of scale would come into play which would reduce their cost even further. And even if the cost was still £2000, are you really going to notice the difference when the average house cost is upwards of £158,000?

If such systems were fitted, the energy costs for most homes would be considerably lower, as the largest source of energy usage would have been removed. It would be easy for the government to do, as it could be mandated by legislation, yet wouldn't need subsidising or cost them anything. But they don't do it. Until they come up with such schemes, government ideas on trying to save energy don't really amount to very much and don't really address the problems.