Urgent need for “clean” energy

I’m glad that Carly Leonard was pleased with the success of PECT’s Green Festival (‘A massive thanks to our volunteers’, August 25). Let’s hope that it served to convince more people of the need to take action on climate change.

She will agree with me, I hope, that there is still a lack of joined-up thinking in the debate on clean energy production.

If the council canofferfree solar panels to home-owners, why then do they not make better use of more profitable sites? There’s no shortage of them.

Consider, for example, the railway system.

All those lovely embankments and sidings just waiting to be useful, conveniently fenced-off too! Has anyone made a proper study of such possibilities?

From the air one can see huge expanses of untouched roof-space. Maybe not so easily accessible, but not beyond the capabilities of a specialist team with ingenuity and the right equipment.

Why not create some purpose-built roofs?

Supermarket car parks could be partially covered with solar panels, happily generating electricity in the daytime while protecting shoppers from the elements.

Similarly, a canopy of panels at street-light level would be handy for urban pedestrians in wet weather.

There is no need yet, please, to use farmland, and I am glad the council’s scheme was abandoned.

Farmland should be for cows, buttercups and skylarks. Let us put up our panel sin the areas we have already stolen from nature.

As I gasp and choke in the fume-filled street so four‘ environment capital’ I shall have fingers crossed for our Peterborough Environment City Trust and for the Peterborough in Transition group.

Some i magination and determination is urgently required or we will be left behind in the solar/hydrogen revolution.