Monbiot anti-micropower rant is anti-green
Everybody in UK eco-circles is talking about George Monbiot this week, which is just the way he likes it.
George Monbiot is an unashamed cheerleader for big power – his column in the Guardian has previously come out in favor of large nuclear power stations, and this week he spoke out against micro-generation. George Monbiot is also in favor of large, centralised wind farms and other forms of renewable energy, and sets himself firmly against micro-generation –which he caricatures as a middle class subsidy.
The occasion for his latest outburst was the introduction of the UK government-backed Feed-in tariff (FiT), which will reward householders and others who generate renewable energy back into the grid. Ignoring the fact that the FiT was enormously successful in Germany, which has become a European leader in micro-generation, "the only renewables policy that makes sense," says George, " is to build big installations where the energy is – which means high ground, estuaries or the open sea – and deliver it by wire to where people live."George Monbiot has missed several points here – the most important is that the reasons for installing micro-power are not entirely financial – it is also good for energy security if each house has its own power supply, and it is empowering (literally) for communities, to know they are collectively able to generate power independently of the grid. Read full at offgrid
