10 years behind the game

I accept that our Governments are totally clueless and bewildered so I am looking to IMechE to put pressure on them

I am not an intellectual. I am not a gifted person. I am bewildered!

Would it be possible for PE to provide an in-depth explanation as to the Political perspective; the UK financial perspective; the UK job perspective and the inability of the UK Government to have a coherent UK energy strategy?

I am thinking in terms of:

1. What is the rationale for spending so much money on wind energy? Money that is sent overseas.

2. When we needed electricity there was a high pressure zone sitting over the UK such that the wind farms provided less than 1% of the energy required. What a ‘good buy’ that was.

3. Why do we have so little gas storage – gas that is provided by Russia who have their own political agenda.

4. Why are we not pushing local electricity generation by way of PV and sensible Buy-back arrangements?  These schemes relieve the upgrade of the National Grid and make the Grid more robust.

5. Why do we persist with hot water radiators positioned below windows? This heating arrangement is a disaster from a heating perspective and a decoration perspective, not to say a perpetual maintenance problem from failed thermostatic valves - think! Why are we still pumping hot water about a house with all the problems that brings?

6. What is the future for Infra-red heating appliances?

7. House insulation. When are the Building Regulations to make a ‘big jump’ in their specifications and make something like 10 watts per sq M against an outside temperature of -8 C the basic insulation/heating requirement?

8. When will water recycling become mandatory on new builds?

9. What is the Government doing to promote household CHP along with Buy-back?

10. If UK Government thinks that we can survive without nuclear energy, then they really are living in fools’ paradise – the sooner we have nuclear energy the better we will be placed.

By now you might have deduced that I am not too happy about our Government being about 10 years behind the game. I accept that our Governments are totally clueless and bewildered (at bit like a rabbit in the headlights) so I am looking to IMechE to put pressure on them to get their ‘backsides in gear’.

Russell Pratt