SCOTT has work to do after his great successes at archery – a third place at The Masters and winning the national longbow team inter counties for Devon and Cornwall.
AS I write this, the summer heat is still around and the deadline for this issue’s missive from me is here. I have had what I suppose is writer’s block, spending the last week rejecting my subject matter suggestions for this article, mainly concerning vitriol at a certain American leader. I had given up trying, and was sipping a mug of coffee whilst standing out the back of Reconnect Towers. The grass fields were a cidery hue of gold, as the dry spell continued. There was not a breeze, even the wind turbine behind our house was stationary. ‘No power’ I mused. That’s it! I remember, as a teenager, the sudden appearance of Delabole’s propeller turbines in the fields during the summer of 1991. Part of Britain’s first commercial wind farm. I also remember the optimism they generated when looking at them; clean energy, no smoking chimneys, another world was possible. Ever since then they’ve been the marker that has meant the regular family visits to Cornwall are nearly over, and we’re close to our destination. If only the same was true of the energy market. A once glorious potential for green energy has stalled. Community Energy England (CEE), the body representing grassroots energy organisations, has reported that the number of people generating their own power has almost flatlined, with only one new group forming in the UK in the whole of last year. CEE in its 2018 State of the Sector report put the blame on cuts to subsidies for homeowners to install solar panels and a “hostile planning approach” that has in effect banned turbines. Both totally halted the expansion of green energy sources. The recent scrapping of the tidal scheme in Swansea also suggests that new clean energy supplies aren’t set to appear on the horizon dreckly. Last year at Port Eliot Festival I sat in on a fascinating discussion about commercial wave power, and a few weeks later at Off Grid I learnt that home-grown community energy was the greenest way forward. I envisioned our coastal towns generating their own energy for their locality from a mixture of KymoGen style wave energy buoys, solar, biomass generators, and wind. Grassroots schemes offer communities the potential to cut electricity bills in half at a time when the ‘big six’ energy companies continue to raise their prices. However, the set up costs for communities must now be paid up-front, and nearly 30% of community energy groups saw their schemes fail last year, the report exposed. It’s crazy that subsidies for green energy have been slashed by this government, whereas their fossil fuel subsidies are still more than 30 times higher. Community energy groups were thriving at the rate of 30 a year until 2015, but only the one was formed last year, bringing the total to 228, serving 48,000 members, hardly a national groundshift. Talking of which, the government are now hellbent on making fracking the most attractive option. Whilst other countries are realising that community-owned renewable energy delivers greater economic, social and environmental benefits, the UK continues to ignore the opportunity in favour of fossil fuels. At the start of the summer another report by Solar Power Europe revealed that the number of new solar power installations in Britain had fallen by half for the second year in a row. The cuts in subsidies begun in 2015 has had a dramatic effect. New solar capacity in the UK declined to 0.95GW last year, down from 1.97GW in 2016 and 4.1GW in 2015. Despite the cost of solar panels falling significantly, large-scale renewable energy projects are now also stalling in the UK, which has had the slowest growth of the world’s top 20 solar markets, and has the lowest prospect for growth amongst our European peers in coming years (Brexit anybody?). All this sunshine, that’s turned the grass so golden, could have been generating heaps of cheap energy for our communities. What a waste! But, it’s not all doom and gloom. A report this year by Devon County Council and Regen, on behalf of the 23 community energy groups across the region, showed Devon is taking a leading role in the UK’s community energy revolution. There are 23 community energy organisations in Devon, more than any other county in the UK. These groups run 62 community owned renewable projects, which have generated 17,431 MWh of clean green energy, saving 6,080 tonnes of CO2 emissions and helping 2,717 homes to save on energy bills. That number needs to be so very much higher. Too find out more about the environmental, economic and social benefits that community energy projects are providing near you or your business, see new.devon.gov.uk/energyandclimatechange/community-energy.