The climate emergency is one of the biggest challenges facing our Borough, our country, and the world.
While there is a long way to go before we have reversed the damage from climate change, there has been a lot of progress for us to be proud of.
Just a decade ago, 75% of the UK’s energy requirement came from fossil fuels, either coal or gas. Ten years later, more than half of our energy comes from ‘Low Carbon’ sources, with roughly 20% coming from wind alone.
Over the last decade, energy companies have been some of the most proactive in adopting ‘Green’ practises, in driving forward the decarbonisation agenda and, as a consequence, lowering the nation’s carbon footprint.
But we still face a challenge. The demand for energy in our everyday lives continues to grow, and, as new technologies become available and more commonplace, such as Electric Vehicles, our demand for energy is only going to increase further.
In Wokingham Borough, we are choosing to take action on energy as part of our Climate Emergency Action Plan. Many of you will have seen and participated in our recent consult-ation on building a solar farm in Barkham.
The proposed site on its own would be able to power around 6,000 houses, significantly reducing our carbon footprint in the process.
How that is possible? Surely the energy generated will only benefit houses signed up to ‘green energy tariffs’ and they may be in vastly distant areas of the nation? The answer is that this simply is not how our electricity grid works.
We have a national grid. Energy is generated and enters the national grid supply, to be used as and where it’s needed. No matter what energy tariff you are on, whether for a domestic or commercial property, you receive your energy from your nearest electricity substation, which receives it from the nearest energy generation site.
Energy doesn’t work like Amazon.
Just because you pay for a green tariff doesn’t mean you only receive ‘green energy’ at your house. That would require direct supply lines, linking point of generation to point of consumption. In the UK you get the energy from your nearest substation which gets it from its nearest generation site.
Because of this system, energy generated at a solar farm in Wokingham Borough would get sent to the nearest energy substation where it becomes part of the National Grid energy supply.
In turn, this energy would get directed to homes and properties nearby as and when required. This means that whether they are paying for a green tariff or not, homes nearby to a Wokingham Borough solar farm would utilise the energy generated at that site.
Because of this, we can also say that Wokingham Borough will benefit from the carbon savings that the solar farm creates.
Solar farms in Wokingham Borough will play a crucial role in tackling the climate emergency, cutting our carbon footprint and providing ‘green energy’ to nearby homes. I hope it won’t be long until we are generating electricity and feeding it into the national grid for the benefit of nearby homes and properties.
Cllr Gregor Murray is the Executive Member for Resident Services, Communications and Emissions and Conservative councillor for Norreys Ward at Wokingham Borough Council
