Comments please!! A ‘green’ Staffordshire County?
I’m developing policy for Staffordshire County Conservative Group and I’m in need of some input about environmental stuff.
There’ve been an amazing number of visitors to this site over the last 8 weeks and they even seem to be spending some time on it, which is great. I’ve had a lot of contacts via the ‘contact’ page but very few using the ‘comments’ button.
I need your views to feed into the policy development for our County’s future. Tell me what you think:
Should we provide power via wind turbines in Staffordshire?
What do you think of road charging and tolls?
Should all new housing development meet the very top ‘green’ standards despite the high cost?
When it comes to County services…..cost or environment, which comes first?
What would Staffordshire as the ‘greenest’ county in the UK look like? What would it mean?
So come on……let’s have your views. Either leave a comment below or if you don’t want your views made public, click here.
6 comments
Matthew, We tend to take things for granted that do not have an immediate impact on us or our environment. It’s only when we take time to look back at what were actually doing to our environment and our Children that the ‘penny drops’. No one walks anywhere anymore! (although I do admit that I have seen you on your bike!)People don’t seem to have the luxury of time, or even feel at risk. Whilst driving, we’re not just polluting our air, we’re also less fitter because of less exercise. So many children I know now seem to suffer some sort of respiratory problem!
As you know we’re in the game of trying to provide a safe environment that offers our Children structured training and excercise with high standards of behavior to become ‘good citizens’, to do ‘our bit’at the levels that we operate at – even disposing of litter correctly is a positive!If our Children are being brought up to respect our surroundings, us adults need to look at things on our level – what we can influence. Your ‘Green’ policies are key to our stanards of life affecting our health and the quality of our surroundings- who’s going to say that’s unimportant?
I’m very doubtful about the cost effectiveness of wind turbines in an inland area. Surely for the calm times we will have to install an equivalent amount of generation this roughly doubling the capital cost.
To be anything like efficient wind turbines have to be BIG and that produces a lot of local opposition- a fight not worthwhile in Staffordshire.
I think road charging is an excellent idea. I hope the technology will be robust enough soon.I’m sure there will be opposition before it happens but the London scheme seems to show that soon dies away.I’m rather dubious about the nostrums proposed by the “green lobby” and I think we need to look a bit wider. How about heat pumps for example as a way of getting low grade heat much more efficiently.
The area which surely ought to be of a lot of interest to us in Staffordshire is better ways of using coal. Everything from greener coal burning by perhaps fluidised bed combustion through to underground gasification. If the latter can be made to work properly it surely is a natural for our area.
Should we provide power via wind turbines in Staffordshire?
No we should not high capital cost low output and an environmental menace-not in my back yard will be the problem as well
Totally inefficient and a gimmick (in land) ask any qualified engineer not paid by New Labour
What do you think of road charging and tolls?
Yes as long as it is reflected in reduction of road tax and petrol tax or economically it is impractical and we continue our path to the third world
Should all new housing development meet the very top ‘green’ standards despite the
high cost?
No only what is practically achievable with 2007 technology
When it comes to County services…..cost or environment, which comes first?
Cost– as nothing will work unless good value for money, its like the greater picture why should Staffs pay for some thing the other parts of the UK does not –like why should the UK be green when China USA and India are not we are a drop in the bucket this is a global issue
What would Staffordshire as the ‘greenest’ county in the UK look like? What would it mean?
Nothing if no one else signed up as above
We have in fuel tax a system of pricing by use that is simple, largely reflects environmental impact, is cost effective to operate and cannot be avoided.
Abolish road tax which is expensive to administer, can be avoided and doesnt reflect use.
Don’t go down the toll/road charging routes – too costly and complicated to administer.
Is the basis of Conservative philosophy not, “Let the market decide” and would not an approach based on fuel tax alone not reflect this? A happy coincidence of philosophy and environmental benefit.
Wind turbines in staffordshire?
The answer should depend upon the available wind resource, being inland this is likely to be lower than higher more exposed areas, but a developer will assess this within the overall economics of a proposal.
Climate change is upon us and we have to find ways to reduce our carbon emissions. Wind turbines provide the only form of renewable generation that is sufficiently well developed to be economic (wave and tidal will follow), but only provide a part of the overall solution. Greater awareness of energy efficiency measures and less unnecessary use of transport will make a real contribution.
The significant advances in wind generation this year are shown in the article on this link:
http://www.bwea.com/media/news/061220.html
This next link helps to answer a number of commonly asked questions about windfarms and explore some of the mis informed myths:
http://www.bwea.com/ref/faq.html
The problem with wind farms is that they are too inefficient with a recent report saying that 20% efficeiency is common (or 80% of the time they are not working!). The problem with this is this is near the figure needed to make them even carbon neutral (carbon saved during lifetime – carbon cost of building etc). In Staffordshire it is unlikely that we have many (or any) areas where an efficient wind farm could be built.
So what else could we do.
One idea would be a heat exchange incinerator. This is a method of disposing of rubbish by highly efficient incinerators, not like the old type with all the problems they had, and using the heat generated to either produce energy or even piping it to local homes as is done in other countries.
Road tolls – why not transfer the idea (and cost) to fuel as it cannot be avoided, simpler to administer, needs no new technology or government department to run it, and hits those that use roads most and have least efficient vehicles. There are simple ways of excluding haulage vehicles so that prices on all goods are not increased and inflation is controlled.
Cost or enviroment – probably both if a cost effective enviromentally friendly scheme is available this should be chosen. A simple example of this is in traffic calming – use chicanes rather than speed humps as speed humps cause noise, damage to vehicles (tracking can be knocked out of line so you have to change tyres with the knock on damage to the enviroment), use more fuel do to rapid slowing and speeding up and increased polution in the local area.
It should not be difficult to find other areas where a slight change in thinking helps the enviroment without costing money.
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