This story from the Independent on Sunday is very disappointing. Even the local government team, who have been getting so much right recently, apparently take leave of their senses when it comes to policies aimed at addressing climate change:
"All new homes are rated under the Code for Sustainable Homes. Where planned properties do not reach the highest level 6 standard – where their own green energy production offsets their emissions – developers would be charged a tariff of around £15,000 by the local council to fund infrastructure and local services. Part of this would also include contributing to a "buy-out fund" to pay for the construction of wind farms, solar panels or geothermal technologies in the local area, which would supply the new development with green power."
We are already providing huge subsidies to small-scale renewable energy. The feed-in tariffs are so generous that they have been denounced by George Monbiot as a "rip-off". Policy Exchange has called for them to be abolished.
The basic problem is that we are encouraging the use of an inefficient means of generating power. Things were bad enough when the Government used to try and pick winners, now they pick losers! We all pay a price in higher energy prices.
Under this scheme, even the most efficient new home will either have to fit some form of microgeneration or pay a £15,000 tax/fine. That will increase the cost of building new homes and worsen the extremely pernicious shortage of affordable housing. Just as the vulnerable elderly - excess winter mortality was 36,700 in 2008/09 (the last winter we have data for) - pay the highest price for renewable energy subsidies that drive up energy prices, it will be poor families struggling to find an affordable home who suffer from this green rip-off.
It will also be an administrative nightmare. Working out whether a property has covered its emissions with new green energy production requires answering a number of tough and uncertain questions. What load factor are you expecting? Are you adjusting for the need to back-up wind and solar power, reducing the efficiency of fossil fuel plants? How can you reliably measure and predict a household's emissions, both in construction and by assessing thermal efficiency afterwards? Those are just a few questions that will need to be answered to stop this policy becoming even more unfair and inefficient in practice than it is in theory.
The buy-out fund sounds like it will lead to a big waste of money too. It is like the schemes that require energy companies to spend a certain amount improving efficiency. If they have money left at the end of the year they start mailing out energy efficient light bulbs to households almost at random, just to spend the money the regulation requires them to. Councils will wind up supporting all sorts of inefficient schemes not because they are good ideas, but because they need to spend the buy-out fund.
This is yet more bad climate change policy and risks exacerbating the social, economic and political challenges facing a Government trying to push through a significant fiscal adjustment.
