Why is potential payback so often the main consideration when thinking of installing renewables? And yet no other part of the building gets this scrutiny. No-one questions the payback on a boiler, but unlike conventional fuels, renewables have the added value of reducing carbon emissions.

Coal, oil, electricity or gas suppliers don’t offer any payback at all, but you still have to service, maintain and renew conventional equipment. Self-builders, in their embracing of micro-renewables, are leading the way in looking beyond pure monetary issues.

Pretty much everything you put in your house is bought without regard to payback. So why this fascination with anything to do with energy use do we talk about payback?

The car we drive, the house we own, plus many lesser things, often seem to be vanity- and/or comfort-related. A new car (which many people buy every 2 or 3 years) will lose say 35% of its capital cost in its first year. Even if it’s the most economical diesel or hybrid to run, it has no payback at all. Neither has a dishwasher, powerboat, jetski, TV, HI-FI, new kitchen, video camera etc. – but these can be financially justified somehow… Many of them have huge carbon footprints too. The only unquantifiable “payback period” can be related to feel good factor, ego or status. The latest 50″ Plasma’s don’t need to talk about energy savings to sell themselves.

Why should we talk about payback then? It misses the overall context.

Well… arguably green product will only become a mass market product if it competes financially.

It is not what like-minded people (as above mention self-builders) are doing, but the next step, where these ideas become the norm in the volume house builders repertoire that the benefits are seen. This is financially driven.

At Future Proof Energy, we believe that our products and services are financially viable. No gimmicks here. There are also few points worth bearing in mind:

  • All (sometimes speculative) payback figures are based on current fuel prices, which are overall going up, and the cost of micro-renewable technology, which will come down the more the technology is specified.
  • Renewable technologies will add value to your house, as energy efficiency becomes an increasingly important factor in buyers’ choice of house.
  • Building the technologies into the fabric of the house at the outset is more cost-effective, and will therefore speed up payback.
  • As more people start to use micro-renewables, they’ll become cheaper to manufacture and buy, and payback periods will become shorter.
  • With energy saving certificates becoming compulsory, the value of an energy-efficient home will rise, improving payback.
  • The more sceptical bodies sometimes define payback as merely the annual fuel bill savings, divided by the capital cost. But they fail to take into account factors such as future energy price increases and savings in boiler servicing.

Advertisement