With the imminent arrival of the UK Feed In Tariff (FIT) for electricity generation, opportunities are being created for domestic emission reductions that could produce significant emissions savings when deployed at scaled volumes.  Using renewable energy technologies such as solar photo-voltaics and smaller scale wind turbines, home owners or communities will be able to generate their own electricity and be paid to do so through the Government’s new tariffs.

Some are criticising the approach however. According to one source, the Government are expecting a loss of £8.2bn in this section of the domestic energy market, accepted as a bid to boost micro-generation capacity. In his Guardian blog, George Monbiot has claimed the scheme is “about to shift £8.6bn from the poor to the middle classes”(1) and questions the cost-effectiveness of the scheme from an environmental standpoint.

The argument presented by Monbiot presents the case that different renewable energy programmes will generate variable quantities of energy, yet should be compensated equally in terms of financial return. Taking his example, the renewable energy generated through domestic solar PV looks set to be between seven and nine times less cost-effective than the alternatives (such as large-scale wind turbines or hydro-power plants).

Taking this a step further, the whole initiative is worth around £8.6bn of tariff generation, for relatively inefficient energy output.  To put it in perspective, if applied to carbon offset projects, this sort of sum could be reducing over 1 billion tonnes CO2 around the world(2). In comparison, the UK Government expects their FIT scheme to save just 7 million tonnes CO2 by 2020 and a potential of 20m tCO2 by 2030(3).


(1) http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/03/01/a-great-green-rip-off
(2) Estimated figure uses ClimateCare’s carbon offset cost per tonne
(3) http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/consultations/elec_financial/elec_financial.aspx