Government publishes energy strategy (07/04/22)

[najaB]

I'd say food independence is entirely possible but would require a more seasonal diet than we tend to like these days.

It depends entirely on what is meant by 'food independence'. If it means "we produce enough food for everyone's calorific and nutritional needs to be met" then yes, absolutely. If it means "we produce the food that people want" then almost certainly not - at least not with a carbon footprint that makes any logical sense.

 

[Trog]

This winter has been quite mild so I have only used about 20 units of electricity for heating, so not sure how much insulation 5 units would pay for. As for wood burning stoves I live in the countryside, and the main effect of a wood burning stove would be to reduce the amount of wood I burn due to its greater efficiency. The reduction in volume of wood burned and better combustion of the wood that did go into it should reduce the amount of smoke particles, compared to my current open fire.

Once the government gets off its high horse about insulation and realise that it is an absolute necessity to reduce energy consumption in domestic heating, some sort of serious plan will be generated. Even if it reduces the demand for energy by 25%, that would ease the decisions on providing the base load.
As far as log burners go, they are increasingly being seen as anti-social, especially in built-up areas, and with the increase in urban pollutants, they may become the trigger for the return of smog. I expect new installations to be restricted more and eventually prohibited for domestic use.

As for actually doing home insulation, new properties fine just up the standards required during construction but in older properties how? The low hanging fruit of windows, roofs, and cavity walls have already been done to a large extent. Insulating under floors, and presumably putting an insulating cladding on the outside of old solid wall houses sounds very expensive and disruptive to me. There would also probably be resistance to the look of old stone houses being boxed in and rendered.

 

[najaB]

As for actually doing home insulation, new properties fine just up the standards required during construction but in older properties how? The low hanging fruit of windows, roofs, and cavity walls have already been done to a large extent.

They have not. The UK has some of the worst housing stock in Europe.

 

[SJL2020]

Quite. The issue is less the loss of agricultural land permanently but more that farmers are being incentivised and encouraged not to farm their land. Rewilding programmes and turning it over to forests and similar. I think there's a reasonable question mark over whether that's a good idea or not! Good from an environmental point of view perhaps but not from a food independence point of view (not that that's really possible in the UK!).

How about we make meaningful strides towards reducing the 9.5 million tonnes of food waste the UK produces annually before making further attacks on the country's already badly diminished biodiversity.

 

[ainsworth74]

How about we make meaningful strides towards reducing the 9.5 million tonnes of food waste the UK produces annually before making further attacks on the country's already badly diminished biodiversity.

By all means! I can't imagine anyone would object to that.

 

[GusB]

As far as log burners go, they are increasingly being seen as anti-social, especially in built-up areas, and with the increase in urban pollutants, they may become the trigger for the retur of smog. I expect new installations to be restricted more and eventually prohibited for domestic use.

I live in a village where coal fires used to be the norm for heating houses but they gradually fell out of favour as domestic oil heating became more widespread. Wood burners have since become more popular once more but, while I love a real fire, when I'm out on a cold evening and there are several lums reekin', it does seem like a bit of a retrograde step to be burning stuff.

 

[ABB125]

I live in a village where coal fires used to be the norm for heating houses but they gradually fell out of favour as domestic oil heating became more widespread. Wood burners have since become more popular once more but, while I love a real fire, when I'm out on a cold evening and there are several lums reekin', it does seem like a bit of a retrograde step to be burning stuff.

By contrast, in my opinion you can't best the smell of woodsmoke on a cold winter's evening.

That is, as long as you're burning proper wood, not rubbish covered in paint etc!

 

[GusB]

By contrast, in my opinion you can't best the smell of woodsmoke on a cold winter's evening.

That is, as long as you're burning proper wood, not rubbish covered in paint etc!

Don't get me wrong - on a really cold day there's nothing better than a proper fire, and I do like the smell of wood smoke. In our old house the coal fire was literally the only source of warmth for a few years before we bought Esmeralda* to run the central heating; even then, a wood-burning (or rather, coal-burning in our case) range took a bit of effort to get going in the morning.

I sometimes curse my air-source heating for not being as good as other forms of heating, but all I have to do is press a button to get it going. I could even set a timer if I could find the blasted instructions...

* Esmeralda was a beast of a thing, manufactured by Wamsler. She had a mind of her own and the feeling of hatred between her and my mother was very much mutual!

 

[mbonwick]

I suspect that turning something acceptable in a submarine into something which can be safely installed around the country isn't going to be as easy as you think.

I think it'd actually be the reverse; you'd be surprised how close we are.
Submarine reactors are regulated to the same framework as civilian installations by the Office for Nuclear Regulation with further regulation on the military/maritime side of things by Defense Nuclear Safety Regulator.