Headline news: Greece doesn't use much electricity in the night-time!

From Sky News:

Greece breaks a new record by running the country entirely on renewable energy for five hours

Well done, you think, reducing its reliance on fossil fuels etc... until you read the small print:

It reached a record high of 3,106MWh (megawatt hours) of electricity at 9am local time (7am UK time), according to IPTO, the country's independent power transmission operator.

Yup, during night-time/dawn period, when electricity consumption is only a fraction of daytime peak usage.

So this sort of statement is jumping the gun a bit:

Nikos Mantzaris, a partner at think tank the Green Tank said last Friday's performance was important because "it shows that a 100% renewable electricity system is within reach in Greece, a concept that was considered impossible by most opinion and decision makers in Greece before".

I'd consider this a 'gotcha' worthy of Ali G.

"when the government called on energy providers to simplify their tariffs, this was presumably not what they had in mind"

and what is it that has happened and that Ed Gill, head of external affairs at Green Energy, which offers 100% renewably sourced tariffs, seems to believe is all the government's fault and the obviously unintended consequence of the demand from David Cameron that the energy companies simplify their tariff's?

Five of 'big six' energy companies drop green tariffs

Campaigners fear the move to scrap tariffs for new customers could undermine national drive to tackle climate change

A Department of Energy and Climate Change spokesman said: "We're making bills easier to understand, cutting the confusing array of tariffs currently on offer, and getting people off poor-value dead tariffs. A number of green tariffs remain on offer for consumers who wish to choose them, including many with smaller suppliers outside of the big six".

So the smaller, wholly green suppliers should presumably be quite pleased, what with most of the big suppliers retreating from the field of 100% Green Tariff's and leaving it open to them. So am I the only person who finds Ed's reaction a little confusing?

Who he?

Ashley Seager is managing director of AEA Solar GmbH. He was the Guardian's economics correspondent for five years and left in 2010.

For the more personally lucrative fields of taxpayer sourced subsidy? Certainly not.

The report from the Committee on Climate Change arguing that investing in renewable energy would eventually save consumers a lot of money is spot on.

We are regularly told by conventional utility companies, many politicians and commentators that energies such as solar and wind are hopelessly expensive and reliant on enormous subsidy.

But this is simply wrong.

Oh? Tell us more Ashley.

Solar PV, the area in which my company operates, is a case in point. Three years ago firms like ours were paying about €3,600 per installed kilowatt of solar capacity on barn roofs in Germany. Today it can be done for just over €1,000 – a staggering 70% fall. That is seriously cheap and will just keep getting cheaper.

Newly built solar plants are already considerably cheaper than new nuclear plants per kilowatt hour of electricity produced and we are almost at the stage where we don't need a guaranteed price (known as a feed-in tariff) because solar energy will compete head on with conventional energy.

True, there is an ongoing cost from the German government's previous support for solar, but is much lower than the subsidies pumped by the western world into nuclear, coal, oil and gas over the past decades.

Sorry, but did I just spot the “S” word and terms like “Feed in Tariff” and “Guaranteed Price” Ashley?

And solar is starting to pay its subsidy back. Germany now has more than 30 gigaWatt peak (gWp) of solar plants installed, such that on almost all days in the spring, summer and autumn, solar energy surges into the grid at a time when demand is at is strongest (air conditioning etc is running like mad) and when spot market energy prices are at their highest.

Ashley doesn’t unfortunately reference the overall situation in the UK but luckily we already know just how successful Solar has been in the UK and how taking away the “someone else can pay” public subsidy has no impact whatsoever on that success.

A likely story...

From the BBC:

More Britons than not regard subsidies for wind power development as a good deal, an opinion poll suggests.

Commissioned by trade body RenewableUK, the Ipsos-Mori poll found that 43% see the UK subsidy as good value for money against 18% who do not. Another survey has also found a big majority in favour of renewable energy.

Remind me to run a Fun Online Poll on this to see what real people think, I suspect that RenewableUK might be just a little bit biased and might have asked leading questions or pre-selected its audience.