The Small Isles

[Kelpie]

You're quite correct, that is nonsense.
Wind is now the cheapest available form of power generation and the UK produces more power from wind than from coal., which IMHO is a step in the right direction.
By the way I can see a large wind farm from my house, and no I have never received any direct financial benefit from it so I am not biased, nor am I a Nimby.

Ideally I think we should be moving towards a system of distributed generation and storage, with grid-connected electric vehicles becoming a core part of that system. What's your solution?

 

[JumbleDuck]

Eigg is a great example and a lovely place. We were there three or four weeks ago. The hydro and solar are unobtrusive and the wind turbines are small and have little impact on the landscape.
It is the monster wind turbines that I am against and because they are unreliable you also have to have ugly power stations to back them up about 60% of the year. Nonsense or what?

Faith, Hope and Charity on Gigha are pretty unobtrusive as well. I'm afraid that the days of monolithic power stations humming away 24/7 are gone for ever (unless nuclear fusions gets closer than the twenty years away it has been for seventy years ...). We're inevitably going to end up with wind turbines which don't on calm days, solar panels which don't on cloudy days, tidal turbines which don't twice a day ... and maybe some gas fired stuff which won't whenever Mr Putin wants to invade somewhere in the Baltic.

 

[afterpegassus]

Ideally, we should be looking at reducing demand for energy.

 

[armchairsailor]

But aren’t the Small isles lovely, eh?!

 

[pmagowan]

Ideally, we should be looking at reducing demand for energy.

I don't think that is a good solution at all. A bit like saying 'really we should be living in the dark ages'. We should be looking at having more and cheaper energy to promote growth, innovation and economic development, IMO and there is no reason why it can't be 'green'.

 

[Quandary]

I don't think that is a good solution at all. A bit like saying 'really we should be living in the dark ages'. We should be looking at having more and cheaper energy to promote growth, innovation and economic development, IMO and there is no reason why it can't be 'green'.

That would be okay if we made effective use of the energy we use but we do not, we are profligate with it, a simple example is my wife's continuing reluctance to only put in the kettle the amount of water she needs to heat. The housing stock in the UK is a bigger issue, we put up with its miserable performance because we can afford to, encouraged by a government which thinks it makes sense to send out £100 'gifts' in the hope that old codgers would vote for them. (I know, I know, Gordy started it but it continues.)

 

[pmagowan]

You need to be able to be wasteful to innovate. For example, I did a bit of oil painting but with the cost of oil and canvas I never really got stuck in and experimented and instead was too careful and thus my paintings were predictable. If I had lots of cheap canvas and paint I could have let loose and I might have been the next Picasso! Ha ha
The housing stock is inefficient but then that is a separate issue and mostly to do with the old fashioned and ineffective ways we build things. We can be far more ‘green’ by centralising our energy production instead of relying on millions of little boilers, internal combustion engines etc.