Day job: climate change, heat pumps, energy at Nesta
Other stuff: low-fi economics on growth, cities & economic geography, general UK policy, occasional basic charts
Bristol, he/him, lots of parenting / caring.
Personal account.
Andrew Sissons
Loading...
Nice summary here of the press coverage around it at the time...
www.eliterenewables.co.uk/blog/end-of-...
New Energy Edit newsletter out!
This one looks at one of the biggest debates bubbling away in the energy world: what should we do about lots more people generating their own electricity and not paying for the electricity grid?
New Energy Edit newsletter out!
This one looks at one of the biggest debates bubbling away in the energy world: what should we do about lots more people generating their own electricity and not paying for the electricity grid?
When I talk to lay people about retrofit - be it heat pumps, insulation or solar - they often feel it difficult to get practical actionable information. It can be a bit too high level in some cases or too technical in others. On social media it is the usual back and forth claims and counter claims.
Remember those rumours in the run up to the Budget about heat pump subsidies being abolished for most households? It was nonsense, of course, but it looks like it did cause a huge spike and trough in people applying for heat pump subsidies.
One silly briefing to the press really can move markets..
How can we resolve this tension? Well, aside from my universal answer of "electrify to increase electricity demand", I think there are two things we can do:
1. Accept that we probably need to keep electricity standing charges, and may even need to increase them (though we could get rid of gas SC)
2. Lean into time of use tariffs much more - because in general, times when self-generators need to dip into the grid will be times when electricity is more expensive.
(We are doing some Nesta work on how we could make ToU the norm)
... On the other hand, it reduces demand for electricity from the grid, which means spreading the fixed costs of the system across less electricity - raising costs for those who remain tied to the grid (often those who are less well off tbqh)
One of the fun things about having a fairly fixed daily parenting routine is discovering that the music in the little shopping centre is on the same playlist every day.
Realised this because said playlist contains 2 Become 1 by the Spice Girls, in June, just before 8pm
There is a real, unresolved tension here around people going off-grid.
On the one hand, encouraging more businesses and households to install their own generation helps increase clean energy capacity and ease pressure on the grid (especially if, say, you're a data centre)...
