A colleague alerted me to the new energyshare initiative from British Gas (and, slightly bafflingly, from Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall...who I know is most definitely of the knit-your-own-lentil-soup persuasion but wouldn't necessarily be my go-to person for advice on green energy) which wants to encourage us to get together with our neighbours and generate our own electricity, sell it back to the grid, and use the funds to do something awesome. So far, so very Big Society.
I really, really want to love this idea. It's got everything - getting to know your neighbours, cutting your carbon footprint, social media, saving money. But it's a classic example of a great idea let down by poor execution (at the moment - to be fair to British Gas this is the beta version) . If I was seized with a sudden urge to erect a wind turbine on the new pedestrian zone outside the Ritzy cinema in Brixton, I'm not entirely sure I'd know how to go about it based on this website. The "how to" guides are buried away, there are lots of different and distracting elements that take the focus away from the core idea, and it lacks an easy-to-use overview. On the other hand, if I already had the idea, the support, the know how and the motivation, perhaps energyshare would be the difference between my idea succeeding and failing.
So, 6/10 for energyshare - great idea, great potential, just needs a bit more work to make it truly great.
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