A curious edition of Panorama last night that seemed to suggest that the current high cost of energy could be put down to the Government's wind farm policy and, to some extent, to the cost of the pylons and other infrastructure needed to link said wind farms to the grid. The renewable energy industry is well able - and willing - to engage in debate but this was a particularly unfocussed programme, with the suggestion that a better way of meeting green targets could be to shut down coal fired power stations and the wind farms, and to replace the lot with oil fired. No-one would argue that stopping burning coal would be anything but a good thing, but to have an energy policy based entirely on oil would be doing no favours at all to the next generation - or to ours, come to that. Equally puzzling was the total absence of PV in the discussion - would have thought that was just a little newsworthy right now.
I may be getting a little bit long in the tooth but I wish "serious" TV programmes could manage to suggest that a government might be gambling with the future without illustrating the point by dragging an entire film crew into the casino and then constantly moving chips back and forth across a roulette table!
Nevertheless - and I don't seem to be giving the programme a very good press here - you can watch it here.
