THE CARBON WAR

Dung of the devil 227
They install a tile. All the clicking, adjusting and screwing to the roof
battens takes just a few minutes.
It is clever, even a non-techie like me can see that. And it looks really
good; much more stylish than on-roof modules. I tell them as much.
A representative of the marketing department is permanently attached to
the team. Photos of me being educated are taken, and tweeted. I am requested
to retweet them.
I do so. How different the marketing game was, I remark, when we first
started working on our own products. You know, around the turn of the century.
The marketeer tells me about the market research that led to this product.
91% of UK adults want lower energy bills, and 58% of homeowners find on-roof
solar unattractive, she explains. Critically, 86% of them want new additions
to their homes to be stylish. With that in mind, she gives me a selection of the
feedback in the field. It is, to say the least, encouraging.
We sit over coffee, talking about prospects for the product. Jon Sturgeon,
the dynamic team leader, tells me that the team is worried that the UK government
now seems set on axing the small but still-vital subsidies for rooftop
solar, and that this will mess up the residential roof market, and Sunstation’s
prospects in the UK with it. What do I think is going on?
I think there is real hope in the world outside the UK, I say, but at home
our new Conservative majority government seems determined to position
itself on the wrong side of history. It doggedly favours shale gas and nuclear,
still, despite all the evidence that both are not just uneconomic, but coming
off the rails operationally.
There is a whiff of madness about all this, I tell the Solarcentury innovation
team. Osborne is suppressing renewables in order to promote a strategy that
is not working in America. In the latest pages of this catalogue of fast-brewing
ruin, BHP has written down $2 billion of US shale assets. The tally of drillers
that have bankrupted themselves by drilling at costs above sales price now
stands at four: Sabine Oil & Gas, American Eagle Energy, Dune Energy and
Quicksilver Resources. Others are in visible distress. A bond offering by Swift
Energy has just failed: a $650m deal dropped because of low investor appetite.
The shale train is coming off the tracks, for those with the eyes to see it. There
don’t seem to be any in the UK Treasury or Downing Street.
As for the tight environmental regulation that Whitehall has promised for
UK shale drilling, the gas industry’s own taskforce, the Task Force on Shale Gas,
has reported that the government is failing to implement a key fracking safety
recommendation: the monitoring of wells to ensure no leakage. Meanwhile,