Global warming rationality

It has always seemed to me to matter not a jot whether the present, apparent, warming of the climate was due to carbon dioxide emissions or not. The reality is that sooner or later the oil would run out. In any case, burning fossil fuels, whether in power stations or motor cars, is basically antiquated technology. Guaranteeing continuity of supply is also going to be dodgy politically unless you are sitting on top of lakes of oil or mountains of easily accessible coal.

It is also, in my humble opinion, irrational to generate electricity in a limited number of centralised plants, and then waste a large percentage of what you produce in distribution. Equally stupid is the current fad for boasting that bio-diesel or ethanol will make up 10% or so of your company's fuel use as both M & S and Tesco have recently. This is just a bit of green window dressing in order to promote a caring image.

I don't know the figures, but the percentage efficiency of growing and harvesting a suitable crop, transporting the harvested product, processing, which would require pressing to remove oil or fermenting and distilling to obtain ethanol, combining the result with diesel or petrol and then distributing the result again must be abysmally low.

I can remember, probably 20 odd years ago, coming across some research that looked at the surface area of all the buildings in, I think, Leeds. A calculation showed that even with the then solar power technology that was available, it would provide all the power needs of the city.

The problem has been, and still is, that the capital cost of generating electricity via solar power is too high. For my own purposes I calculated whether the cost of installing solar panels on my roof would provide savings greater than the amount I would receive in interest if I invested the money. It was very apparent that I would be much better off putting my money in an average building society account rather than lashing out c. £18,000 for the solar installation.

I was grateful to have my attention drawn to this item in the Telegraph. It is to the shame of the paper that this item appeared in the money section rather than on the front page. It would appear that the time frame for solar power technology to become competitive in terms of capital cost is shrinking rapidly. The rising costs of fossil fuel based technology due to political uncertainty is likely to hasten this process. The website of the firm involved is here.

Hat-tip to Ric for drawing this to my attention.