Solar PV has proven to be the most popular form of renewable energy and it isn’t difficult to see why. Solar panels are easy-to install, reliable, environmentally-friendly, promise longevity and can help you save a huge amount on your energy bills. They also give you the opportunity to earn money back on energy as you can sell surplus electricity back to the grid.

Placed on the roof of your home with no detrimental effect on the overall appearance of your home, photovoltaic systems will supply your home with the vast majority of electricity it needs during the day simply by harnessing the natural light of the sun.

As a result of this, dependence on your standard electricity supply will decrease sharply and help us as a nation preserve essential fossil fuels. With energy prices at an all-time high there really is no better time to go solar as demonstrated by the overwhelming clamour for them at Planet Solar.

Being one of the most experienced solar companies gives us an advantage over our rivals as we have the expertise and knowledge required to ensure that people get the best out of solar.

Arrange a FREE site survey now and we will show you how just why solar is one of the most-talked about green innovations.

There are many options available when it comes to renewable energy sources, from wind turbines to hydroelectricity, but solar PV panels are often the most appropriate as they can be attached to any building with very little fuss or effort.

Solar PV panel systems are fitted onto the roof of a building where they harvest free electricity from the sun. The light that is produced by the sun is the only thing that solar panels need to be able to work effectively, meaning that you could be saving yourself money even on the dullest of days.

Agricultural businesses often have very large buildings which are used for storage so they are ideal if you are considering investing in solar panels. The amount you can save and earn from your panels depends on how many you have and how much electricity you currently use. Any electricity fed back to the grid also generates an export payment, offering an additional payment. For homes without a Smart Meter, the current presumption is that 50% of all electricity generated will be exported back.

That being said you don’t need a massive building to take advantage of solar panels. They can be fitted to the smallest of houses ensuring that renewable energy is an option that is available to all.

There are many solar panel installers throughout the UK so it is important that you choose a company that has a lot of experience and knowledge within the industry. Solar panels are a long term investment so reliability is key if you want to continue making money from them. A reputable company will also be able to advise you where to place your solar panels as their position can affect how much sunlight they can receive during the day.

Renewable energy is the future, so invest in solar panels today and begin saving yourself some money.

However, just as with a double glazing company or any other form of home improvement firm, you need to carefully select the right solar panel installer in Lancashire to do the job. There are a small number of companies in the region supplying and installing solar panels, but it is unlikely that you will have ever heard of them, never mind come into contact with them so you need to do some research prior to committing to their services.

Any company who installs solar panels should be accredited by the appropriate body as it signals that the firm can be trusted enough to do the job and meet the levels of performance a customer should expect to receive.

You will be able to tell whether the company offering solar panels in Lancashire is recognised as the logo of the accreditor will usually be on their marketing material or website.

You can also research in other ways such as checking out any testimonials left by previous customers online as this will give you a good indication as to whether the firm is worth putting your money and trust in. Ask friends or family if they have had similar work done in the past or know someone who has as it is a growing industry and someone in your area is likely to have had solar panels installed.

Choose carefully and you will be rewarded with quality installation and lower energy bills.

Solar panel installers in Cumbria come no better Planet Solar. We know exactly how to reduce carbon emissions and are here to advise you how you can do the same with our help. A solar panel in Cumbria when placed onto the roof of a property can help provide a home with the majority of hot water and electricity it needs to function properly throughout the day. It is powered solely from the light of the sun, so as you can guess it costs nothing to function.

Your traditional boiler will still have its part to play but on a much reduced scale. It will only need to be relied upon when it goes dark and if you consider that for the majority of that time you are likely to be asleep, you can start to understand just how much solar panels can help bring down the cost of your energy bills.

If we were all to invest in renewable energy it would give us the chance to not only help replenish supplies of fossil fuels, but it will also make for a much cleaner environment. This will make the UK a greener place and will act as proof that we doing our bit for the planet as a whole.

Planet Solar really is at the forefront of technology.

The UK government is committed to reducing its carbon emissions through the adoption of renewable energy sources, particularly in regards to the generation of power in order to combat climate change. The Energy Act of November 2008 set out a series of provisions in order to help the government meet its targets. The need for a feed in tariff comes from the fact that it is far more expensive to produce energy from green sources than it is from fossil fuels. This of course renders the retail price of fossil fuel electricity cheaper than that from renewable producers. In order to attract renewable investors, it is therefore necessary to incentivise those wishing to invest in the installation of renewable plant.

Feed-in tariff legislation fixes an above market rate for utility companies to buy electricity from renewable energy producers. It could therefore mean for example that if the retail price of fossil fuel electricity were 15p per kWh, then the rate for renewable electricity could be up to 60p per kWh. In this case, the 45p difference per kWh would be spread across every customer of the relevant utility company. It is this fixed tariff paid by the utilities which makes renewable energy an attractive prospect for investors as it guarantees them a return over a long period and has been highly successful at attracting investment where it has been implemented across Europe. Germany for example now produces over 14 per cent of its energy from renewable sources, something which has been attributed to the generous and comprehensive feed-in tariff system implemented by the German government.

The Feed-in tariff system has already been in place in many states such as Germany, Israel, the US, Spain and Australia for some time now and has been instrumental in the success and growth of renewable energy operations there. The recent Energy Act (November 2008) includes specific provisions for the implementation of feed-in tariffs in the UK by 2010 although at the moment the precise details of the kWh threshold and tariff price has not been set.

Despite the current lack of clarity, it is believed that as we move towards 2010, the government will set a tariff which allows renewable energy to be a viable option to investors. The government has established the new department of Energy & Climate Change (DECC) headed by Ed Milliband, whose job it is to reduce carbon emissions and help the UK meet the targets set out in international agreements such as Kyoto. They will see it as absolutely fundamental that the provisions for the feed-in tariff allow the UK to have the legal infrastructure for investors to feel safe in the knowledge that any investment they make is protected in the long term as it is in other states with strong feed-in tariff systems.

Planet Solar are specialists in the design and installation of solar energy systems for homes and domestic properties. We’re part of Energi Investsments plc which has vast experience within the Educational, Social Housing & Commercial Developers sector designing and installing Solar Photovoltaics (Solar PV), Solar Tiles and Wind Turbines.

The government said smart meters, which provide real-time information to consumers about energy usage, and smart grids, which give real-time data about power demand and generation across the network, were integral for Britain to hit its carbon targets.

The Department of Energy and Climate Chance (DECC) estimated the cost of replacing the country’s 47 million meters with smart meters by 2020 to be around 8.6 billion pounds ($14.25 billion) and will publish a detailed smart grid route map in early 2010.

“Smart grids will help manage the massive shift to low carbon electricity such as wind power, nuclear and clean fossil fuels,” energy minister Lord Hunt said on Wednesday.

“Globally the business of developing smart grids has been estimated at 27 billion pounds over the next 5 years and the UK has the know-how to be part of that.”

It is the first time the government has talked about a smart grid, and it will provide 6 million pounds to develop smart meter technologies. The energy regulator Ofgem will make 500 million pounds available over the next five years for large scale smart grid trials.

The government also called for communications across the new national smart grid to be managed centrally, while maintaining metering competition.

All suppliers would be obliged to use the central function under license.

DECC said utility companies would be responsible for installing smart electricity and gas meters in all British homes and most small businesses by the end of 2020.

Smart meters are seen as a first step toward creating smart grids and could reduce energy demand by cutting power to appliances that do not need continuous power, such as washing machines and laptops with batteries.

Director of British Gas smart metering, Peter Allison, said it estimated energy savings from smart meters to be around 2-3 percent, around the same as government estimates.

Source:  Planet Ark (www.planetark.org/enviro-news/item/55763)

The series has been released ahead of the UN climate summit in Copenhagen.

World Health Organization (WHO) director, Margaret Chan, said health protection should be a criterion by which mitigation measures were judged.
Dr Chan was just one of the key figures in global health research who wrote a comment article that was published alongside the Lancet reports.

Another was Professor Sir Andrew Haines, director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, who is chair of the international task force of scientists that wrote the series.

He said that the public health benefits of mitigation policies had not had “sufficient prominence” in international negotiations.

Dr Chan commented: “As this series shows, cutting greenhouse gas emissions can represent a mutually reinforcing opportunity to reduce climate change and improve public health.”

Some of the key findings presented in the reports included evidence that moving towards low carbon transport systems could reduce the health impacts of urban air pollution and physical inactivity.

Researchers also found that changes in farming practice to reduce livestock and meat consumption could improve health by lowering the intake of saturated fat.

And in poor countries, reducing the need to burn solid fuel indoors could have a significant impact on child and maternal health by cutting indoor air pollution.

Dr Chan pointed out that the poorest countries were the most vulnerable to the health impacts of climate change.

Cleaner energy
In one of the articles, scientists from the Basque Centre for Climate Change in Bilbao, Spain, showed how decreasing fossil-fuel-dependent electricity generation could have significant health benefits worldwide.

The researchers said that the middle-income countries such as India and China would benefit most. A reduction in pollution there could prevent many of the premature deaths that are associated with heart and lung damage caused by inhaling the polluting particles.

But the researchers also examined the health impacts in wealthier countries.

One group of researchers described the results of an 18-year study of the long-term health effects of pollution in the US.

The team, led by Professor Kirk Smith from the School of Public Health at the University of California, Berkeley, US, pointed out that “short-lived” greenhouse pollutants, such as particles of black carbon and ozone, can directly damage the heart and lungs.

They said that “separate climate change agreements” might be needed for these pollutants.

In another paper, scientists quantified changes that were needed in the agricultural sector, which contributes 10-12% of total greenhouse gas emissions worldwide.

They wrote that “high-producing countries” should reduce livestock production by 30% to slow climate change. Should this translate into a reduction in the consumption of meat, the scientists say that it could also reduce heart disease.

Researchers called for health and climate change scientists to work together and for more funding for such interdisciplinary projects.
Copenhagen hope

The editor of the Lancet, Dr Richard Horton cautioned against putting too much pressure on the Copenhagen meeting.

He said: “By suggesting that Copenhagen is the ‘last chance’ for a binding international climate change agreement, anything less will seem a failure.
“Copenhagen is a beginning, not the end.”

Professor Haines said: “The Copenhagen conference presents an important opportunity to choose those policies that can not only achieve needed reductions in greenhouse gases, but also move toward development and health goals.”

Source:  BBC News (www.news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8377268.stm)

The environmental campaign group used figures obtained from the Government to show that introducing a more ambitious scheme than that currently proposed would only add an average £2.37 per year on to household electricity bills over the next four years – just £1.20 a year more than the Government is already proposing to add to fund the scheme.

The figures are published as 30 organisations and businesses – including Friends of the Earth, the Renewable Energy Association, The TUC, British Retail Consortium, the Co-operative Group, Country Land and Business Association (CLA), the Federation of Small Businesses, Unison and WWF – have written to MPs urging them to support an Early Day Motion (EDM 276) tabled by Alan Simpson MP calling for a much greater level of ambition for small scale renewable electricity generation than the Government scheme currently proposes.

Friends of the Earth, which led the campaign to introduce a feed-in tariff alongside the Renewable Energy Association, has criticised the proposed scheme as lacking ambition because it only aims to generate two per cent of UK electricity from small-scale renewable technologies by 2020. The group accuses the Government of ignoring the results of research commissioned by DECC which shows that setting the scheme to deliver a 10 per cent annual return on investment (instead of the 5-8 per cent currently proposed) for communities, businesses and households that install renewable electricity technologies would:

• Deliver over 6 per cent of UK electricity generation (equivalent to the output of Drax coal-fired power station, or twice that of Sizewell B) by 2020 – three times the Government’s current target;
• Reduce UK dependency on fossil fuels and increase energy security;
• Cut UK emissions by 9.9 million tons of carbon dioxide annually by 2020.

Friends of the Earth is calling for the proposed tariffs to be increased to deliver an annual 10 per cent return for all small-scale green energy schemes installed during the first three years of the scheme (the payment system is due to be reviewed in 2013). After this payments could be revised for new schemes as other measures are introduced, the UK renewable energy market grows and global fossil fuel energy prices rise – while maintaining the higher level of overall ambition.

Friends of the Earth’s energy campaigner Dave Timms said:
“Small-scale green energy systems such as solar panels on homes and businesses and community-owned wind turbines could play a crucial role in cutting UK emissions and speeding us towards the development of a low carbon economy.

“But the Government’s proposed Clean Energy Cash-back Scheme is far too weak – Ministers must increase payments to make it a success.

“A tiny addition to UK electricity bills would kick-start a world class scheme that would allow homes, businesses and communities to play their part in tackling climate change, increasing energy security and creating thousands of new green jobs.

“The UK’s renewable energy potential is enormous. As the world prepares for crucial climate talks in Copenhagen, the Government must show that it is taking this issue seriously and improve its plans to pay people for generating their own clean, green power.”

Source: Copyright © Friends of the Earth Trust/Limited | www.foe.co.uk

Friends of the Earth’s Executive Director Andy Atkins said:
“It looks like the Government is starting to get serious about the crucial role that local councils must play in tackling climate change – but Government action is required to ensure that every council plays its part in meeting UK climate targets.”

“Ministers should introduce local carbon budgets and provide adequate financial support to help ensure that every local authority cuts its emissions in line with the latest scientific evidence.”

“A strong local carbon budget framework would help the UK meet its targets for tackling climate change, create local jobs and help the UK in developing a greener future.”

Friends of the Earth is calling for local carbon budgets as part of its Get Serious About CO2 campaign, launched earlier this year, which is calling for all local authorities to play their part in meeting UK targets for tackling climate change. The environmental campaign group says that these should be:

• In line with the science: local carbon budgets should be set with advice from the Committee on Climate Change (which advises the Government on meeting the UK’s mandatory targets for cutting emissions) and reflect local circumstances.
• Set for and met by every council: All councils must meet carbon reduction targets- not just those currently prioritising action.
• Properly resourced: Councils need more money, technical advice, and information on local emissions to be able to deliver the scale of change needed.

Following the introduction of the Climate Change Act, responsibility to meet the national carbon budgets is being shared across all of Government. Introducing strong local carbon budgets would show that Government is getting serious about local councils doing their bit to help to meet the national carbon budgets and tackle climate change.

Source: Copyright © Friends of the Earth Trust/Limited | www.foe.co.uk