Commercial Renewable on Council Land

I would like to think that there is a bit of a race going on here. A race to see who can be the greenest, the most efficient and the ones with the most vision. Councils, towns and authorities are included. Who will be the first to host a commercial renewable energy system to compliment to supplement a good deal of local power consumption. Oxford City spoke about this a while ago now, but I've not seen any progress to date (early days); and at the beginning of the year Bristol City also announced their intention to do something.

All of this is being championed by Friends of the Earth with their Get Serious About CO2 campaign.

There are all quite large scale systems with large budgets and large expectations. I wonder if there are a number of much smaller opportunities that should be explored first - several smaller microgeneration systems would help local people and businesses understand how it could be achieved. Sustainable Newbury discussed some excellent ideas about using the weirs in Newbury to add less than 10KW to the grid each. Not much you may think, but it's local generation (and not subject to the 40% or so loss experienced across the national grid) and would be an excellent exemplar not just for the local area but to much of the south.