AS part of their election manifesto this week The Green Party has included the idea of free solar panels for low income homes. A great idea, and tied in with the scheme which furnishes schools with free solar panels, a step in the right sustainable direction.
But let’s not get carried away, because it’s a step rather than a real effort at moving towards our end goal. Why is that? Because both are a drop in the ocean of what is needed for a real difference to be made.
We have published stories from many schools around the county since the push began to make their buildings more climate friendly, and while all have welcomed the support with solar panels, the amount of funding available right now only covers about half of what is required to support a school with more than a handful of classrooms.
With the focus on combining smaller schools into one bigger school in rural areas, you get the issue. Similar to the days when children were asked to bring a sod of turf to school to help with the heating of the building, today, schools are required to find funding elsewhere to meet the demands of a modern school. Parents’ pockets are only so deep and fundraising gets less effective over time.
On the home front, it is laudable that solar panels would be made available free of charge to those in lower income households. But why not provide to any house that wants them?
As an island in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, we should be the Qatar of Western Europe. Having so far failed to show any urgency on the development of off-shore wind farms and being consistently tied up in planning rows with those planned to be developed on land, it seems the short-term solution is to get solar panels on any house that wants them and do away with exorbitant electricity bills for every household on the island.
If we can offer 100% grants for solar panels for lower income households and grants towards the cost of solar panels for all other households, why not make a leap of faith and offer the option of 100% grants to all households on the island?
For homes without a battery to store the power they are generating, the grid would benefit from the energy generators all over the country, while householders would be able to rest easy in their homes knowing that they are heating and powering their homes mainly through renewable energy.
Each of the parties has engaged in the climate debate and given differing hat tips to encouraging people to move to greener sources. However, cost will always be an impediment to many. So why not remove that impediment and commit 100%?
A native of Ennis, Colin McGann has been editor of The Clare Champion since August 2020. Former editor of The Clare People, he is a journalism and communications graduate of Dublin Institute of Technology.