I finished reading “How Bad are Bananas?: The Carbon Footprint of Everything” whilst on holiday.
I am reading it in an attempt to cut through the growing hubbub of noise about micro-renewables. In other words, to see where the really CO2 friendly business opportunities are.
Good quote from the forward (my copy is leant to a friend, so this is from memory), where the author recounts a conversation with a friend along the lines of. “Which is more CO2 friendly when drying my hands, the paper towel or the hot air blower ?” To which he answers “cutting one of your 6 yearly flights to the USA will save 10,000 times more than your hand-drying activities”.
In other words, this book gives us some perspective.
The author’s views on domestic solar PV amount to calling them eco-bling (I am paraphrasing here). They cost about £350 per tonne of CO2 reduced. Compare this with £3 to £4 for well regulated rainforest preservation and developing world birth control schemes.
But don’t forget that £10K spent on domestic Solar PV will not be spent elsewhere, so that’s CO2 saving another plus. And it is overall still one of the few CO2 negative ways of parting with your dosh.
I have also noted some mis-selling by prospective installers. Their quotes go along the lines of : Installation cost £9K, electricity cost saved with feed-in tariffs £600 pa. Therefore return = 6.5% per annum. Therefore much better than a building society rate. Err.. hang on a minute. That’s not a like for like comparison. You can withdraw your cash at any point from a BS account. You won’t recoup your money for about 14 years with the Solar PV. And that is not including any discounted cashflow analysis, which industry uses, which make things a lot less attractive.
HBAB is a great start in mapping out our carbon footprint, it is only that, a start. But fascinating reading for anyone considering a business in this area.
