The Millennium Goals brought about a great wave of change to the ways in which countries go about conducting their internal and external policies - the UK included. Paradoxically Goal 7, which strives to alert countries to the importance of ensuring environmental sustainability, has been shrouded in controversy. While many perceive it as an idealistic stab at launching a green revolution, no individual has volunteered to take up the sword of microgeneration and lead the rest in to battle, rather looking at governments to take action.

While many governments have taken steps to reduce their state’s carbon footprint on our exceedingly fragile earth, Great Britain has often been criticised for not doing as much as other countries to reduce carbon emissions. So how can we, as individuals, be expected to help ensure environmental sustainability?

To counter these accusations of underachievement, the government has, over the past two years, set up a Microgeneration Strategy that aims to provide Zero- and Low- Carbon solutions for businesses, communities, and domestic dwellings. Its targets include all new homes being zero-carbon by 2016, while all new non-domestic buildings should be zero-carbon by 2019. A few years past the Millennium target of 2015, but still a very good step forward.

So what form will these microgenerators take, and how will this be applied? Mainly through small energy generators, such as windmills and solar panels. The idea is that all future buildings be equipped with these small solar and wind generators. The benefits of this approach is that it will enable future homes and businesses to produce and supply their own energy on a local scale, making them self sufficient.

What make microgenerators more beneficial on a smaller-scale is that they engender a self-sufficiency among domestic dwellings (particularly homes with no access to the main gas network), communities, and businesses, which decreases their dependence on the government for energy management. Self-sufficient energy management and helping create a greener world for us all seems like a win-win situation.

Microgenerators systems also have disadvantages in the way that they are not necessarily accessible to everyone. Microgeneration is not suitable for a minority of homes, whereas some business establishments such as shops have little access to this technology at all. Moreover, since microgenerators are a quite modern development, there are still only few specialists who know how to install a private energy producing unit. Microgenerators are not exactly cost-friendly either, which reaffirms the old argument that the future of sustainable development will not begin until costs fall significantly.

So is microgeneration the best way forward? Energy Minister Malcolm Wicks, among others, agree that it is. With the proper government support schemes in place, such as grants as well as more information regarding the pros and cons of microgeneration, more people will be ready to embrace it. It has the potential to have a massive impact on the reduction of CO2 emissions, so the more accessible microgeneration is made to the British public, the more individuals can do to reduce their ecological footprint. For now, it’s back to recycling for most of us until we can afford to produce our own energy.

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