Problem with "renewable energy" is it's image for Average Joe is that It
Must Be A Good Thing, and details like how much energy you'll actually
make tend to get rather overlooked. As in the first paragraph, #1 step
IMHO *should* be a national effort to waste less electricity, rather
than generate more in "renewable" ways so we can keep up with being
profligate wastrels.

Hydro power used to be big in Scotland in a small way. Many of the estates
used to have their own small turbines and generates their own power
supplies. Until the nationalised power companies stepped in and closed those
turbines down. Now, just as before Steam, mills were powered by small local
water mills, which not only drew from the environment but also often added
to it in terms of millponds and mill races, and weirs that controlled the
flow of water, and consequentially many years down the line provide us
kayakers, and anglers alike with a wonderful resource, could it not be that
smaller local hydro operations could not perform the same task without the
vast damage to the environment that has been caused by some of the previous
generation of hydro schemes. And oddly, last time I checked Scotland didn't
actually need much more power....

Ewan Scott