Solar Panels: UK Interest Soars 75%

• Solar Panels
• Solar Energy
• UK Energy
• Climate Change
• Increase Popularity in Solar Energy

Written: Tyrese Garvie

MASSIVE INTEREST – According to Google, search traffic for ‘Solar Panels’ in the United Kingdom has increase by 75% in the last 12 months. This increase in search volume shows us that consumers across the country have a renewed interest in the renewable energy equipment. 

The real question though – is it the best choice for homeowners? Energy Point have partnered with ‘Solar Fast’ to gather information about the ever popular and money saving equipment.

‘The Climate Game’: Financial Times releases Interactive Climate Policy Simulator

• Financial Times releases new educational and interactive game about climate change and policy, in partnership with IEA and Infosys: ‘The Climate Game’.
• Energy Point explain how the game can help benefit public education on climate change.
• FT and Infosys highlight the struggles of Climate Change Policy direction and implementation with intuitive game design and beautiful illustrations by Johan Papin.

Written By Tyrese Garvie | Energy Point

Fill the role of the ‘Global Minister’ – your job is to reach ‘net zero’ by 2050.

The intuitive game released by the Financial Times and Infosys allows you to legislate policies regarding climate change.

Will you ban meat and replace protein with 100% insects? Or will you put solar panels on the roads? When playing, you’re faced with up to 3 different decisions, per round, to be made about a climate change scenario. 

The game, created by the Financial Times, in partnership with Infosys, highlights the struggles of building a carbon-neutral future for Earth; all-while accompanied with beautiful illustrations by artist Johan Papin. 

Explore the different consequences (good and bad) of your actions and understand what can be done to tackle global warming.

FT’s Sam Joiner states that the main goal of the game is clear: cut energy-related carbon dioxide emissions from 36bn tonnes a year at present to net zero by 2050. Additional aims are to significantly reduce other greenhouse gases, led by methane, and to protect people, nature and jobs, all while ensuring the planet remains habitable.Sam Joiner (Financial Times)

Infosys and FT have thought carefully about how the game will play out. You can decide to make massive investments in transport infrastructure, but unless you’ve made changes in the industrial sector, then more pollution will be produced when creating said infrastructure.

The game is very thorough and considers all the variables when you make your decisions and uses data provided by the International Energy Agency (IEA). 

In the interactive online game, you can make decisions affecting the following sectors:

• Electricity
• Buildings
• Transport
• Industry

As you can see in my playthrough, I didn’t perform as well as I’d like. I was able to reduce CO2 emissions by 23.8 gigatonnes, but still had 10.3 gigatonnes to reduce until net-zero.

When you start The Climate Game, you must select an ‘advisor’ – each advisor (there’s five of them) has a specialist area that they hail from. Whenever you perform well in their specialist background, they’ll give you 10 points.

Joiner says “Advisers were introduced to highlight other factors crucial to a net-zero future: behavioural change, new technologies, green business practices and policy change”. 

The advisor ‘Gina Green’ is obviously a hint at ‘Greta Thunberg’, the Swedish teenage climate-change activist – that was obvious. However, the other advisors represent wider shifts in industrious attitudes towards climate change.

‘Waldo Watts’ represents new renewable technology being brought to the table, such as solar panels, PV battery storage and energy-efficient boilers.

‘David Deals’ represents the private sector and the pressure that it is under to ‘do better’. According to Climate Links, just 100 coal and oil companies are responsible for 70% of global greenhouse emissions. That’s around 1tn tonnes.

‘Catalina Congress’ represents climate-wary politicians that are focused on driving policy change surrounding climate change.

Throughout the game you can earn awards for creating jobs, pushing for equality and other accolades. This shows the player that there are other benefits to climate-positive action, other than just helping the environment; for example – I decided to make key changes in one sector, and it helped create 1,000s of new jobs. 

In Summary, The Climate Game sheds a light on the world of climate change policy and politics, at the same time educating those who play about the real threats of climate change.

Energy Point have always maintained that climate change is one of the biggest threats to humanity as we know it. The best course of action against climate change is to educate those around us and invest heavily in renewable technology, such as Solar Panels and A-rated energy efficient boilers.

With support from the government (like we’ve seen recently, with the announcement of 0% VAT for solar products), we can expect a massive rise in renewable technology being used at home.

A spokesperson for Solar Fast said “Solar panels for your home have become ever so much cheaper over the years; a shift in paradigm and attitude will help people save money, energy, and the environment around us. I think The Climate Game will help the public with this change of attitude.”

You can play The Climate Game online, for free.