Better world: Generate a feed-in frenzy

ONE day, 100 per cent of our energy will have to come from renewable sources. But how do we make it happen?

There is a proven way to rapidly boost the adoption of renewable energy – give companies or individuals who want to generate green energy access to the grid and promise to pay them extra for the electricity they “feed in” over the next 20 years or so.

This approach is known as a feed-in tariff, and since Germany introduced feed-in tariffs in 1990, the proportion of electricity it generates from renewable sources has grown from less than 3 per cent to about 15 per cent in 2008. By comparison, the UK, which tried to boost renewable energy through an alternative “green certificate” scheme, generated just 5 per cent of its electricity from renewable sources in 2008.

According to some estimates, microgeneration could provide up to 40 per cent of the UK’s electricity by 2050.

New Scientist