Are roof-mounted wind turbines a carbon myth?

Roof-Moutned Wind Turbines

Roof-mounted wind turbines experienced some pretty bad press once all the excitement died down, with reports emerging about how little power they actually generated compared to what the manufacturers stated, not to mention how long the pay back periods were.

Now a report released by UK organisation the Royal Academy of Engineering has dismissed urban renewable energy technology, such as roof-mounted wind turbines and solar panels, as "eco-bling" merely serving to allow people to show off their green credentials when in fact they are contributing very little to reducing carbon emissions.

It is the equivalent of attaching an extremely loud exhaust on a car with a tiny engine, it may sound and even look powerful but in fact it makes absolutely no difference to the car's performance.

Every home carbon neutral by 2016

Doug King, Professor of Building Engineering at the University of Bath and the author of a report on low carbon buildings published today, has encouraged people to take part in the fight against climate change in other, more effective ways such as buying energy efficient products and installing better insulation and methods of trapping the sun's rays.

The UK government currently has plans to make every home carbon neutral by 2016, but environmental agencies and Dr. King himself have urged Westminster to relax this plan in return for developers making equivalent contributions to wind farms and other large-scale renewable energy projects. "Wind turbines and solar cells on the roof achieve little or nothing and are what I describe as eco-bling. It's just about trying to say to the general public, ‘I'm being good, I'm helping the environment'.

He added that the things that actually save people money are often ignored because they're not considered "sexy".

Damning report

Dr. King's report was so damning that he claims the roof-mounted wind turbines actually consume more energy than they generate.

Field trials carried out last year by the government-funded Energy Saving Trust found that the most productive building-mounted wind turbines in urban or suburban areas generated only £26 of electricity a year. Many of these turbines, which cost about GBP£1,500, were net consumers of electricity because their controls drew power from the grid when the wind was low, as reported by UK newspaper The Times.

If roof-mounted wind turbines were installed to the size large enough to be effective, they would be so big that the vibrations would probably cause the house to collapse. He said that installing micro-generation devices could cost GBP£10,000 to GBP£12,000 per home and reduce its emissions by only a few per cent. He proposed an alternative policy under which developers would offset the entire emissions of new homes by contributing GBP£3,000 per dwelling towards a wind farm on a hilltop.

Practicing what they preach

As much as these turbines represent the level to which people like to show off as green technology becomes ever more fashionable, the government must accept a large chunk of the blame. 45 percent of Britain's current carbon emissions come from households, therefore the UK government must act to encourage, not renewable energy fads, but genuinely effective measures to cut emissions.

This means practicing what they preach - 80 per cent of government buildings opened since 2002 fell below minimum environmental performance standards. So until the government can be seen to be embracing necessary environmental measures itself, they are giving the general population little reason to follow suit.

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