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Wasting Energy On CO2

by | 14th, March 2007

wasting-power.jpgONE day, in the not too distant future I hope, politicians will stop playing one-upmanship with environmental policy and will also stop all this silly talk about CO2, writes Dizzy.

No I’m not about to say CO2 is not the cause of the current warming the planet is experiencing, in fact, I couldn’t care less which side is right on that matter really.

After all there are clearly many eminent climatologists, oceanographers etc. etc. on both sides who know far more about the subject than I could ever hope to know. The problem is that CO2 output is not really where our concern should be targeted.

What we should be doing, as I have said more than once, is resolving the scandalous waste of energy that exists between power plant generation and the consumer destination. Currently, the estimate is that we simply lose 60% of all that energy we produce. Sod the environmental arguments, that waste is just insanely stupid and evidence of wholesale incompetence on our part.

Imagine if we could reduce that wastage to say just 10%? We could continue to consume at the same rate that we do now, whilst actually producing 50% less energy. This would consequentially shut up the “CO2 obsessives” at a stroke, irrespective of whether they’re right or wrong. At the same time we might actually see energy prices falling as well.

The question is, is it possible? The answer, I believe, and so do parts of the Green lobby, is yes.

We need to just look at Woking Borough Council where it is happening as we speak. They are over 90% self-sufficient for all the energy of Council owned properties (including rented accommodation) through the use of local, decentralised combined heat and power generation, as well as photovoltaic usage, solar panels and a variety of other sustainable sources.

In fact, Woking is only connected to the National Grid for matters of resiliency, and energy prices are an order of magnitude lower in their properties. Instead of us banging on about reducing carbon emissions we should be concentrating on decentralising our power generation thereby reducing the massive wastage en-route to the consumer.

Dizzy



Posted: 14th, March 2007 | In: Uncategorized Comments (2) | TrackBack | Permalink