Today my final pre-election blog is on fuel and energy. As I’ve mentioned before, the Greens put in a Sheffield Council budget amendment this time around to put solar panels on council housing to help reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and, importantly, to reduce fuel bills. The Council in Kirklees, where the Greens have the balance of power, have brought in a similar scheme and they think their tenants will save £240 a year on average We’ll also carry on pushing for better insulation – like the cladding on Lansdowne and Hanover Estates. I think there’s a job we’ve still got to do about education as well – many of us don’t know that having heating on at a low heat for longer (rather than quick hot bursts) and good ventilation are key to keeping energy use (and bills) down (and to stopping condensation and mould).
We are all using more energy all the time – as our lives become more tech-dependent – and we know that not only are fossil fuels not infinite resources, but also our national grid won’t have the capacity to keep up with our ongoing needs. Germany has been in the news in the past couple of weeks as they’ve hit new records (74%) in the amount of their energy use being supplied by renewables: I lived in Germany for a year as part of my university degree. It’s 20 years ago now and it was the first time I’d ever seen wind farms – I was blown away (ha ha) by them then, and I still am. There is no doubt that there’s no perfect answer – anything we do is going to have an impact in one way or another, but we know that fossil fuels aren’t sustainable and we know only too well what current nuclear fall-out can look like. This new solar array in the States can provide electricity to 230,000 homes:
When I was living in Senegal, in West Africa, one of my friends was an electrician working on solar panels out there…how amazing it would be if we could exploit the African sun rather than African people. There aren’t many Senegalese people in Sheffield, so it was particularly lovely to meet a voter whose mum is Senegalese (and dad is Gambian) whilst out canvassing on Saturday in Highfield…the sky that day was almost Senegalese blue too!