Four Liberal Democrat MPs submitted Bills to the House of Commons today:
Max Wilkinson wants to change the law to make installation of solar panels on new homes compulsory.
Roz Savage has revived the Climate and Nature Bill
Danny Chambers wants to tackle puppy smuggling
Wendy Chamberlain wants to remove the limits for lotteries on for charity fundraising.
The chances of any of these Bills becoming law depend on the Government giving them parliamentary time. These Bills from Members are debated on Fridays and are liable to being talked out. Let’s hope that these survive the process. At the very least, our MPs will have raised awareness of some really important issues.
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3 Comments
“Max Wilkinson wants to change the law to make installation of solar panels on new homes compulsory.”
Good to raise this and the need to bring the building regulations, dragging and kicking, into the 21st century.
However, really need to go further, with respect to panels:
1. Panels need to be wholly owned by the house buyer(*), not by the developer’s tame utility, enabling them to charge the homeowner for energy .
2. Developers can only pass on the installation costs, not some price that gives them a slice of the potential future energy savings the owner may gain.
3. Sufficient panels need to be installed to cover the typical energy consumption of the size of home – ie. prevent token panel installation, plus, if roof space permits, additional panels to ensure the roof is fully populated.
4. The panels need to be installed with battery packs, sufficient to cover at least 24 hours of typical consumption. This is the game changer as it can allow a house to effectively go off-grid.
5. The rules around grid supply need to be revised, with homes generating electricity and that electricity effectively staying within the local area, it makes sense for a local ie. within village/estate market matching producers with consumers, thus someone could charge their car using electricity generated by their neighbour, without both incurring the costs of using one of the major utilities as an intermediary.
(*) in estate and apartment block developments, the panels could be owned by a resident-owned and co-operative utility.
It takes more than a full set of solar panels and a battery to go off grid in the British (especially Scottish) Winter. It’s still worth having them on all new buildings (commercial buildings that mainly use electricity in the daytime even more so).
It’s much cheaper to install solar panels on new homes as they are being built than to do so retrospectively, so I absolutely support this motion. It could go further, and more that can be done, but as a private members’ bill it needs to be something that gets widespread support. I like that it sets the principle of doing something. And of course once the connection is in place it will be easier for the home owner to add extra, or for the housebuilder to offer more etc.