The UK government’s new energy policy is, to nobody’s surprise, much like their old energy policy. Attention has focused on the lack of support for energy efficiency measures like insulation. There is a more fundamental criticism that needs urgent debate.
It was left to Andrea Leadsom, former UK energy Secretary to identify the key problem. She told the BBC last week that the quickest, cheapest way to increase renewable energy supply, and reduce dependence on fossil fuels, is to build wind turbines and solar farms in the countryside (everything stated about wind below could apply equally to solar). The obstacle, Leadsom said, was that developers tended to place their wind farms in places convenient to plug them into the national grid, and these places are rarely in the most windy locations.
My own local windfarm in East Sussex is a perfect example. Sometimes the blades do not turn even when a stiff breeze comes in across the channel. It was placed there because it is two miles from the former nuclear power station at Dungeness. So the cost of connecting to the grid was negligible.
The solution is staring us in the face – build wind turbines where the wind is – and then instead of feeding it into the grid -send it direct to nearby communities – at a large discount.
Technically, this is completely feasible.
At the moment, turbines are connected to the high voltage lines in order to carry the power to the central generating stations where it is then redirected out again. Instead the power could be distributed locally using whatever local transmission lines already exist. But the Utility companies are not geared up for that.
This  needs a regulatory revolution similar to the one that forced BT to open up to competition 25 years ago. The phone lines were made available to any company wanting to offer a service on them, as long as they met minimum technical standards. The same could happen for electricity.
Local communities could be served by a single turbine, or a group of them, – financed by an individual entrepreneur, a local community or a giant multinational. With the latest IPCC report stressing the vital urgency of reducing fossil fuel usage now, huge opposition is to be expected from the energy industry to a change in the regulatory arrangements.
The current system does not allow individual consumers to take the benefit of low prices at times of low demand. âBalancing locally demand and supply is still not being incentivised through the system,â said Professor of Net Zero at Surrey University, Subesh Batt. âThe regulators need to look into this and support it.
âThat goes back to the issue of how we ensure that the return on the investment does not leave the local community and improves their overall quality of life and prosperity.
The urgent task therefore is not …
Ukrainian citizens deserve our help right now – in any way we can. But the country is not entirely blameless. It has been discriminating against minorities for some time, including alleged pogroms against the Roma population (according to Al Jazeera reports in 2018 and later).
At least 200,000 Ukrainians are headed to the UK, and the makeshift arrangements proposed by Cabinet Minister Michael Gove are well-meaning, but unlikely to suffice if the beleaguered countryâs Russian occupiers settle in for the medium or long-term.
A rural retreat, however, could be the ideal tonic for a war-weary Ukrainian family when they first land here in the UK. If I was a Ukrainian, I would certainly favour Devon over London at a time when Putin has publicly placed the UK capital firmly at the top of his nuclear hitlist.
How could local communities assist the refugees, beyond making their spare rooms available for a few weeks or months? Perhaps the first formality to be completed is to clarify at a parish council level that large Ukrainian settlements are welcome in the area.
As levelling up minister, Gove is also responsible for a major reform currently underway â the empowerment of parish councils – 10,000 of them in the UK are set to become the basic building blocks of community decision making. Its part of the Brexit pledge of taking back control. Goveâs White paper, published last month, aims to give people a âsense of control in their own communities,â according to Danny Kruger, MP.
The white paper is not yet before Parliament, but if the government truly believes in its aims, then now is the time to prove it. The refugee crisis needs immediate action, and what better way to decide where to place the refugees than inviting communities to come forward with concrete proposals?
In some parts of the countryside, a new community could be a godsend. At a time when agriculture is struggling for labour to fill the gap left by Brexit, and food security has leaped up the agenda for precisely the same reason as we are expecting the refugees, what could be more appropriate than importing a new, rural labour force and giving them the means to produce what we all need – food?
Ukraine has a heavily agricultural economy – 12.5% of GDP is produced in the fields, compared to 0.5% in the UK. Wheat and vegetable oil that will now not be produced, must be supplied from other sources.
These settlements could be established quickly â in a few weeks, or a couple of months at most – as long as the Civil Service is not running it.
Using the latest technologies, we could build dozens of off-grid settlements, housing up to 300 refugees at a time, who would therefore be with their fellow-countrymen and women, rather than billeted awkwardly with kindly strangers who donât speak their …
It began as a perfectly normal arrangement in communal living, copied by innumerable groups that want to spread the cost of a piece of land amongst several households.
But this particular arrangement between two couples to buy acreage in British Columbia (one of the most favourable places in Canada for off-grid) and live together on it dissolved into an acrimonious court battle involving accusations of uncleanliness and a heated disagreement over chicken butchering.
Following an 11-day trial spread over months, CBS reports, a B.C. Supreme Court judge last week rejected a bid by one of the couples to sue the other for trespass and defamation related to a Facebook posting accusing their former partners of harassment.
Justice Marguerite Church found Callandra Neustater was within her rights to respond to untrue posters spread around Quesnel, B.C., accusing her and husband Jacob of being “police informants” who infiltrated “activist, anarchist, Antifa, anti-pipeline and Indigenous rights groups.”
Instead, Church concluded it was the Neustaters who had been defamed by posters that were either created by or at the direction of Michael McKerracher, who â together with his wife and musical partner Rachel â started the court battle.
An ‘off-the-grid’ alternative lifestyle
The judge’s lengthy ruling tells the story of two couples who purchased 17 hectares of land together in the spring of 2016 in the hopes of starting a new life together in B.C. The Neustaters had been living in Manitoba and the McKerrachers had been living in Saskatchewan, a province they deemed too “conservative” for their “unconventional lifestyle.”
They were both part of a community of “like-minded individuals who promoted and lived an ‘off-the-grid’ alternative lifestyle,” Church wrote.
According to the ruling, the Neustaters met the McKerrachers in 2015 when they travelled together during a western tour by the McKerrachers’ musical act The Grid-Pickers.
“Discussions between the four friends eventually turned to their shared wish to move to British Columbia and they began to discuss their similar interests and the possibility of communal living on jointly owned property,” Church wrote.
They split the cost of a $65,000 property, chose sites for their respective homes and both women became pregnant. Callandra Neustater engaged Rachel McKerracher’s services as a doula.
“For a few months at least, life was good for the two families. Unfortunately, this state of affairs did not last and cracks soon began to appear in their friendship,” the judgment says.
Church said the couples never put their expectations for communal living into writing.
And the two men began arguing.
Michael McKerracher felt “the Neustaters were being controlling by asking him to park his vehicles off the property, not to leave derelict vehicles, and complaining about him having gatherings on his own side and yard site,” the judge wrote.
By contrast, Jacob Neustater felt that “McKerracher wanted things done ‘his way’ and would get upset if the Neustaters disagreed.”
‘If I find …
The UK government announced on Sunday night it would boost electric car charging, and tossed out a figure of âanother 145,000 new charging points” to be expected as a result of new regulations to ensure chargers are built in to all new houses and offices. These are likely to be private charging points in houses or offices, rather than public charging points that increase the ease with which EV drivers can refuel.
Electric cars are said to be one of the key weapons in the fight against climate change. Yet many hybrids give out more harmful emissions than the latest diesel models, a documentary on Channel 4 tonight (Monday 21st Nov) has learned.
Meanwhile, the opportunities presented by the shift to electric vehicles (and the threats to the exchequerâs revenue from petrol tax) are still obscure and there is little consensus on policy or technology for delivering the EV revolution. The Transport and Energy ministries are on hard with ample amount of cash to “seed the market,” without actually knowing what the market is, or what it will be in 20 years time.
Apple recently announced it will start selling self-driving vehicles in 2025, and its shares shot to new heights as a result. Imagine a world in 20 years time where very few city dwellers bother to own a car, and taxis are almost extinct. Our streets are no longer clogged with parked cars, because they are always in use, or stored in out of town locations. No time is spent looking for a parking space, and as a result traffic flows 25% more quickly.
That is one possible future for the cars, but what about the car chargers? Decisions made now will either accelerate the switch to cleaner cheaper transport for all, or condemn the country to the slow lane for decades.
The C4 documentary says there are about 26,000 chargers at present in the UK, and found on a single day in September that 10% of the fastest chargers are not functioning at any given time. These ârapid charging pointsâ are normally at motorway service stations and typically cost ÂŁ6.50 for a 30 min ~ 90 mile – charge.
The presenter of the documentary Morland Sanders called for better provision of chargers in remote rural areas which are currently under-represented in the national rollout. âBetter provision in rural areas is vital. That charger on a remote A-road may only receive a handful of visits per day, but it could be the only connector for a considerable distance and therefore essential for those using it,â said Sanders.
There are apps that allow the owners of private charging points to offer their front drives for sale to the highest bidder. This may lead to micro-garages in suburban streets all over the country, but if that si what car drtivers want, ten we had better recognise that now, and mnot …
A new law aimed at protesters will allow police to seize thousands of vans parked anywhere in the UK, other than designated camping sites.
The new Police Bill is aimed at reducing the right to protest in the UK – but hidden away in Clause 4 of the Bill, is a chilling assault on all who live in vans, campervans and other recreational vehicles. Even those who want to stay in a van for a few weeks over the summer will be adversely affected.
Please sign our parliamentary petition, while the Bill is currently being debated in the House of Commons, so MPs can hear direct from voters what they must do to amend the proposed law.
Under the guise of attacking protest camps, the anti-vanlife law threatens anyone who wants to park up for few days or a few weeks on someone else’s land – whether that be a council-owned lay-by, or behind a hedge in an unused field.
Parliamentary Researchers have published a briefing document on “Public Order and Unauthorised Encampments” which makes it clear that the aim of the legislation is to “deter trespassers from setting up an unauthorised encampment,” even if it is for a few people for a few weeks.
At a time when the tourist industry is still hampered by Covid, with camp sites full to overflowing, and a wave of evictions is likely to hit those who have been unable to earn their rent for the past year, this new law is guaranteed to increase homelessness in the UK and reduce the ability of thousands of individuals to live off-grid, while still earning wages through remote working or driving to work.
Legislation details
The 2021 Police Bill is currently going through its Committee stage in the commons. It will strengthen police powers to tackle unauthorised encampments that “significantly interfere with a person’s or community’s ability to make use of land.” Imagine three camper vans parked on a street. Do they significantly interfere with ability to make use of that street? That will leave everything to the judgement of local people who want to complain, and local police who have to enforce the law.
The proposed powers will come into effect when:
A person aged 18 or over resides or intends to reside on land without consent of the occupier of the land;
They have, or intend to have, at least one vehicle with them on the land;
They have caused or are likely to cause significant damage, disruption or distress;
Persons fail to leave the land and remove their property following a request to do so;
Persons enter or return to the land with an intention of residing there without the consent of the occupier of the land, and with an intention to have at least one vehicle with them, within 12 months of a request to leave.
This new …
Our Landbuddy section is one of this web site’s features most valued by our readers. Now we have released a video to explain how to use it.
It allows people with land to contact people looking for land, and vice versa – there is also a third category for people who just want to help out – perhaps at an off-grid community near them.
Landbuddy is a browsable map – which means you can zoom in on the area you are interested to explore and then find like-minded people who are advertising.
We hope you find it useful. Please contact us with any comments or leave them on the site – and please be in touch with any videos or stills of your off-grid life – send any news stories to news@off-grid.net
In real life, the actress Liana Cornell âco- star of the Amazon and Sky TV series Britannia – is living off the grid in Cornwall, UK. She is a strong woman â not afraid to turf her boyfriend out of the house while she carries out our zoom interview. And she plays a strong woman in Britannia â a Roman epic set in 43AD and featuring a number of powerful female lead roles. Recently the 31-year-old sat down to discuss her new eco-documentary series, Refugia, with off-grid.net.
The remarkable pledge Liana has made to herself is that all her acting revenue beyond what she actually needs to survive is ploughed back into causes she believes in – including environmental activism â either through her films, of which more in a moment or the activities of the people she makes the films about.
âIâve done a lot of environmental work throughout my life, and there was this gap between people doing the work and people who could donate. That was where Refugia comes in.â Its a 3 part series on WaterBear which she wrote, shot and presented herself â made to support and draw attention to some amazing environmental initiatives (until now in Australia but in future around the world).
âI wanted to create something to pull back the curtains and show how they are doing the work â truly good work.â She said. âThey donât have the time and fundsâ to get more funding.
As well as publicising the characters in her eco-series, she also finances them. you see her presenting cash to individuals she meets during the series. âWe have helped to buy back a rainforest in North Queensland and replant it; create a seaweed forest and (sequester) Carbon (by growing) hemp.â
âThere are 25 different things we have done with that money.â She is particularly excited about Hemp, which has long been illegal but is now being rehabilitated in the new pro-cannabis climate in America, although not in the UK.
Off-Grid living
Liana is from a well-known acting family in Australia, and was brought up in a coastal rainforest town, with much of the property off the grid. âI enjoy the idea of being off-grid â when we had the fires in Australia my family (in different houses) still had electricity and our own water.â
She told me she had found herself in the UK at the start of lockdown last February 2020 – and would have decided to stay anyway – even without the shoot for Britannia series 3. Her significant other used to live in a van, and he now shares the smallholding they found together in a hidden part of UKâs wildest and most remote county.
Lianaâs voyage of discovery filming Refugia was also a voyage of self discovery. âI lay in a sleeping bag with a knife on my chest, coyotes and mountain …
It seems amazing to the off-grid and van-dwelling communities that a low-budget docudrama about life on the road could be about to receive a large handful of Oscars at the ceremony later this month.
The movie Nomadland even has a scene about how to go to the toilet when you are living in a van with a kindly, elderly lady demonstrating the size of bucket you need.
The Director, Chloe Zhao is the daughter of a Chinese self-made billionaire, and itâs even more surprising that a woman like her would want to make a movie like this. Â Zhaoâs previous two films were reinterpretations of the classic Western, and âChloe had been looking to make a movie about young van dwellersâ, said journalist Jessica Bruder, author of the book Nomadland on which the movie is closely based.
Bruder is a burner – a regular visitor to the annual Burning Man festival. She found the theme for her book in the nearby town of Empire, when the sole employer closed the factory, and the community scattered to the four winds. Even the zip code was cancelled.
Her 2017 book was optioned by a couple of producers close to Frances McDormand (of Three Billboards fame), and when they approached Chloe Zhao, says Bruder, Chloe switched her focus from young van-dwellers to the older generation of vandwellers in the USA â the ones who call themselves Snowbirds â because they flock down south together in the winter months.
The film is about the sense of community, and the loneliness, and the constant search for work which makes them analogous to the cow-pokes of old, who would head where the work was. But for this generation (at least in the movie), the main employer is Amazon, rather than a cattle farm. And the seasonal work is mainly in the run-up to Thanksgiving.
These modern cowboys and girls are people of what used to be called retirement age â 60-somethings who through bad luck or bad judgement had ended up outside the safety net of pension and medical care â the film is stuffed with characters played by real people who really live on the road, and their stories are mostly to do with divorces that decimated their savings, or an illness that reduced their ability to earn. At that age, itâs understandable that very few opted for this life out of choice. Most feel itâs something they were forced into. Itâs only the younger age groups where two big things have changed. Firstly, the idea of a job for life and a mortgage for life are just not on the radar for many young people. And just as important, – the technology has enabled a different mindset, mobile technology means you can be warm and comfortable anywhere you can locate some solar panels and a battery. And the internet means you can work from anywhere …
We know a lot of you have concerns and questions about the ways governments are stopping people from living off the grid. Its a growing problem everywhere, and Covid legislation has made it worse.
The proposed powers will come into effect when:
This new offence will be punishable by a prison sentence of up to 3 months, or a fine of up to ÂŁ2500, or both.
Fuelled by a desire to break free from mortgages, rent and commuting;  searching for the simple life, in beaches and beauty spots  a largely invisible, group are houseless but not homeless. Adam Butterworth, 26, an aeronautical design consultant, and volunteer at the RNLI, decided to live in a van after falling foul of an unscrupulous landlord. He explained: âI was spending ÂŁ900 a month, nearly half my wages, to rent a one room studio flat that was filled with damp and causing me respiratory problems.
âCircumstance is the biggest thing. If you can afford a massive house, you always will buy one.
âA van is the most attractive alternative to haemorrhaging money on negligent landlords that couldnât care less.
Yet financial freedom came at cost: the cold. Despite installing a log burner, wall insulation and getting creative with duvets, he said that low night-time temperatures, especially during winter, were âchallenging.â
Without electricity or the internet, the van had taught him to enjoy the simpler things in life. He described how of a summerâs evening he would park facing the South Downs and admire the view with a bottle of locally produced craft beer.
âWhere we live, we are blessed with places to go,â he said.
Henry Shanks, another long-term van resident based in Henfield, echoed this when he said that one of the best things about van life was the âconstant stimulation from new places. âWhen you have had enough of that spot, you can just pack up and move along.
âIt avoids any kind of stagnation of life.â
Being a musician, the mobility of a van was âidealâ for his career. Clad in lineage oak, it had running water, a kitchen, solar panels, gas, charging batteries and even a piano.
He spent ÂŁ3,500 refitting the vehicle.
While people were âgenerally friendlyâ, there âwasnât much space to park [and the] infrastructure is not great, recreation spots do not have facilities, like taps, toilets and rubbish bins.â
He also cited new laws aimed to clamp down on illegal traveller sites as âmaking life difficult.â
In January 2021, the Home Office implemented new âanti-trespassâ legislation that can land those camping on private land with hefty fines of up to ÂŁ2,500 and jail terms.
Growing tired of living with her parents, 25-year-old Laura Bates from Steyning was planning on buying a van to âpay her own way.â
While studying a masterâs and working part-time at an engineering firm in Storrington, she explained that âfinancial reasonsâ had influenced this decision.
âTrying to rent, save for a mortgage and have any sort of life is pretty much impossible.â
A van was also seen as offering the chance to âdeclutterâ and âsimplifyâ her life.
She said: âwe have so much stuff,
The Washington Post reports an unprecedented rise in arrears owed to Utility companies by America households struggling in the pandemic. Those bills are about to fall due. And the Utilities are planning to collect.
There was a moratorium on Utility bills, but it has now been lifted in most states and now only DC and 14 States still protect consumers from Utility debt collection.
In the DC, area, Fairfax Water is “considering” shutting off service for nonpayment. There has been more than a sevenfold increase in unpaid bills since before the pandemic.
Nationally, As of Dec. 31, Americans owed their gas and electric utilities an estimated $32 billion, according to the National Energy Assistance Directorsâ Association, which represents state directors of low-income energy aid programs. In the District of Columbia, NEADA estimates that almost 63,000 households owed about $50 million, while more than 400,000 in Maryland owed $251 million.
âWeâve never seen numbers like this before,â said Mark Wolfe, NEADAâs executive director. âThe question is, how do we keep families connected to the grid and in their homes when they donât have income coming in? .â.â. Weâve never had a situation where this many people havenât paid a bill in more than nine months, and we still have a long time to go.â
Washington Gas plans to begin sending shutoff notices to unresponsive Maryland customers after March 31, which could lead to disconnections starting around Memorial Day, the utility said. About 80,000 accounts in the Washington region were more than three months past due as of Dec. 31 â a 30 percent increase from a year earlier.
A coalition of more than 600 racial justice, labor, environmental and religious groups have urged President Biden to declare a national ban on utility cutoffs. The administration recently extended a federal moratorium on evictions through March and proposed $25 billion in rental assistance and $5 billion for home energy and water costs as part of its $1.9 trillion pandemic aid package.
One economist estimated that residential electricity use spiked 10% on average between April and July 2020, leading to households spending nearly $6 billion on extra usage.
A 13-year-old entrepreneur schoolboy has set up a farming business after renting a neighbour's land to rear his flock of sheep. Young farmer William Banham fed, watered and wormed eight animals before taking them to be slaughtered and selling on the produce.
William, of Long Bredy, Dorset, who’s not from a farming background, started out at the age of six, learning the ropes and determined to be his own boss.
He was just 12 when he found a patch of land to start ‘Will’s Lambs’. When he’s not attending Sir John Colfox school, he braves all weathers to single-handedly feed and water his flock.
William said: “I was determined to work for myself, not for somebody else.
“I don’t think any of my friends have their own businesses – sometimes they joke about it, but I think mostly they’re quite impressed.”
He doesn’t come from a farming family, but has helped out on a farm from the age of six. And while many adults are squeamish at the thought of where meat comes from, Will’s attitude towards the realities of life is mature beyond his years.
“I know I’ve given them the best life possible so I wasn’t too sad about taking them to the abattoir. You just have to accept that’s how it is.
“I also want to make sure every part of the animal is used, and will be selling the sheep skins.”
His mother Caroline said: “William would have me drop him down there at 6am – he’d stay there for 12 or 14 hours if he could.
“During lockdown, every morning and afternoon he’d have to go and check the sheep. “But he’s never failed to get up, he’s been really responsible.”
Feedback from customers has been ‘amazing’, according to Caroline.
“Everyone has been in touch to say it’s a great-tasting product. Will’s just got this amazing spirit, he gets things done.
“He’s quite self-motivated when he wants to do something. We’re really proud of him, and the fact he’s done everything himself.”
2023 © Off-Grid.net
9b Audrey St. London E2 8QH
email news@off-grid.net
call US office: toll-free 1-877-706-7423
OR
UK: +44 207 729 2749
How to register – Coming Soon
How to Manage your off-grid account
How to use the off-grid map – Coming Soon
Coming Soon
