Renewable energy such as solar, wind and hydropower, can be used to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels, and while big regional and national projects are needed to displace coal and gas, we can also make a difference with smaller projects at the community or domestic scale.

Energy end-use is on century old, progressive and accelerating path towards electrification - see The Future Is Electric.

Greening Our Energy: How Soon?

On Thursday 22nd February, a talk ‘Greening Our Energy: How Soon?’ was presented at Sawyer Hall, Nailsworth, by Dr Richard Erskine, Education Lead for Nailsworth Climate Action Network. It demonstrated how the UK could achieve 100% of its energy from renewables by 2050 or before without using significant amount of land area.

A blog about the talk can be found here.

A full transcript of the talk (including extensive references) and text from a Q&A following the talk, can be found here.

What can you do?

• When you next change your utility supplier, check out those offering green tarifs, and ideally ones that are clearly helping by investing in additional renewables capacity.

• Consider getting solar PV. Although the original Government feed-in tarif scheme has ended, energy providers will be offering an Export Guarantee, to compensate for any energy generated that is not used by the householder and goes onto the grid.

• Make sure that when planning permission is being sought for renewable energy schemes in the Stroud District that you take a look and assuming you approve, write to offer support; the silent majority has been silent for too long (it is only a small but vocal minority opposed to renewables).