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North John's avatar

The government's position is broadly right; set a target reduction for carbon reduction and let builders decide how they are going to meet it.

Solar is not appropriate for every roof.

Reducing winter energy use when the grid is under stress is far more important than reducing energy use on sunny days when grid load is light.

Householders will install solar panels for economic reasons if they can generate solar energy cheaper than the cost of taking electricity from the grid which itself is going to have a big solar element in summer months.

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Peter E's avatar

Unfortunately we will always be reliant on at least some natural gas or some kind of chemical energy store (natural gas being the cheapest) for the days when there is no wind and no sun and the energy demand for heating is the greatest. You simply cannot economically build enough long term storage with currently available technology because how much are you going to build? If you build more than you need for the very worst possible case that you can imagine, either that case will be exceeded or you will be paying for something to be built and maintained that will never be used. That will not bring fuel bills down for the people least able to afford them. There will have to be a trade off between renewables and natural gas and it will probably be voters who decide where that is. Yes, I know that is unpalatable but we have limits to what is possible with technolgy and financing. If you can't fix the supply then you need to fix the demand and the nature of the demand.

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