Government pre-budget report - going greener?

With the Copenhagen climate summit going on this week, one might possibly be forgiven for being just a little cynical at the timing of the UK government's raft of announcements on encouraging people to go greener.  This is at the same time as seeking rafts of cuts elsewhere, increasing various taxes and so on in an attempt to halve the uk's deficit within the next 4 years.  The BBC news story can be found here .

On the plus side it has to be good news for those who care about moving to sustainable energy sources and reducing usage elsewhere.  Amongst the proposals are a boiler scrappage scheme - 125,000 homes will be offered up to 400 pounds to replace old out-dated boilers - although the man from British Gas says there are 4 million old boilers in UK households.  From a somewhat selfish point of view I find this of interest since our boiler is old and inefficient.  I would love to replace it and save some of the cost of a new boiler at the same time.  Having looked at alternatives I see little option (at least in the affordable bracket) at the moment other than to replace our existing boiler with a more efficient condensing model.  The question is whether to keep the hot water storage tank for a future rooftop water heating system.

The government is also saying that any electric company car vehicles will be exempt from company car tax for the next 5 years.

The place where it all starts to get misleading is the suggestion that those who have their own wind turbines or solar panels will be able to make on average 900 pounds a year, tax free, by selling excess energy back to the grid.  This is not your average householder but those who have enough land to make a serious size installation of  turbines or significant acreage of solar panels.  We currently use about 7500 kWh of electricity a year - perhaps a little less now - at around 10 pence a unit that is around 750 pounds.  Even if the government pays a premium, I would have to generate at least twice that to be able to earn 900 pounds.  My calculations for a typical domestic wind turbine shows that we would fall a long way short of continually generating the necessary kW of power for our own needs, let along the 2 kW plus necessary to earn my 900 pounds.

The payback time on a typical wind turbine today is about 12 years in a total 20 year life.  Making the income tax free will improve the return, but it won't (or at least shouldn't) encourage small households to go and install their own turbines and solar cells.  If someone wishes to be altruistic and get themselves off the grid at whatever cost then fine, but don't be misled by all the fine words.