At 2:40 into this video, there is a remarkable statement.
The primary reason for… the feed-in tariffs isn’t actually to encourage low-carbon generation. It’s actually to encourage customers to engage with their energy. And so what we’ll see… coming from solar panels will be a very, very small proportion of the UK energy generation in the long run.
Now, this raises a question.
Why?
Under the former model of electricity supply in Britain, the Central Electricity Generating Board and the regional supply boards did everything they could to make sure that the customer could rely on electricity being there at a flip of the switch, for the lowest feasible price, without needing to “engage” with anything.
In general, people have enough concerns in their lives already to occupy their minds, without somebody deciding that what they really need is to apply their problem-solving and reasoning abilities to select the most economical electricity price plan for their current and anticipated needs, and then review the selection of plans every few months to make sure that the one they picked is still the optimum. Economists will tell you that this is exactly what people are good at, enjoy doing, and ought to spend their time on. To us this seems good cause to worry about economists and their influence on our society!
One of the key concepts of the “small is beautiful” movement of the early 1970s was that each household should, to the greatest possible extent, produce what it consumed and vice versa. This idea informed much of the so-called ecological thinking of the time (which is strange when we consider that ecology, properly speaking, is above all the study of interconnectedness), and continues to exert a strong influence today. There are good reasons for questioning the principle ― but what we see here is a kind of grotesque pantomime of it.
