After a weekend of heavy carpentry and a bit of wild swimming, back to a good 25 minute run up the misty lochside. The route passes a small hydro-electric project, built by the owners of a “sporting” estate, to take advantage of the Feed In Tariff (FIT) scheme. This scheme is essentially a government bribe to induce the affluent to invest in renewable energy generation and to sell surplus power back to the national grid.
Superficially, any scheme to encourage the use of renewable energy sounds good. Here in Scotland there are a lot of opportunities for hydro-power. In over-populated & drier England the focus is much more on photovoltaic (PV panels). At a time when bank interest rates are so low, FIT is being seen as an attractive opportunity which will bring a return of maybe 10% interest to anyone with a few thousand pounds to invest. However, critics of FIT, such as George Monbiot (ref), argue that the government money would be much better spent by developing more effective renewable technology, especially in the case of PV panels.
There also seems to be a more fundamental flaw in such commodification of energy. The planet’s energy, like its air, is a resource to be nurtured and shared fairly, and shouldn’t be promoted as an opportunity for the rich to become richer.
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