1000’s of Britons have voiced opposition to a request by Tesla to produce electrical energy to British houses.
And what’s the only real motive for this opposition? It’s due to Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Final month, Tesla utilized for a license to produce electrical energy to British houses. The applying was despatched to Ofgem, UK’s authorities vitality regulator.
Along with Tesla’s enterprise promoting EVs, and its CEO’s enterprise making guarantees about autonomy and robots that by no means materialize, Tesla can also be within the enterprise of promoting vitality merchandise.
The vitality merchandise embody photo voltaic panels, after Tesla’s controversial acquisition of SolarCity, an organization run by Musk’s cousin Lyndon Rive, in 2016. In addition they embody Powerwalls, Tesla’s dwelling battery backup system which may retailer vitality from a house’s photo voltaic panels or from the grid, after which use it or promote it again to the grid later throughout peak hours when electrical energy is most costly.
However much more apparently, Powerwalls might be hooked right into a community, known as a Digital Energy Plant or VPP, which permits hundreds of batteries to concurrently push vitality to the grid when the grid wants it. This will help to finish energy outages and may also make a major amount of cash for owners who take part.
A VPP may also assist with general grid stability. Whereas a single battery doesn’t do a lot to assist your complete grid, hundreds of batteries all collectively will help to shave peaks and shift hundreds grid-wide, serving to to allow the transition to renewable types of vitality technology like wind and photo voltaic, which might be intermittent resulting from climate, clouds, gusts of wind and so forth.
And the UK is doing fairly effectively at renewable adoption – the island which began the commercial revolution as a result of it’s actually constructed on a mattress of coal simply shut down its final coal plant final yr. Clear electrical energy development is robust, with over half of its electrical energy coming from renewables sources final yr.
And it has set much more formidable targets going ahead, focusing on an 81% emissions reduce by 2035.
So, a VPP is perhaps helpful in a rustic with a lot wind and photo voltaic.
Whereas Tesla’s software doesn’t specify particulars of its plans (In accordance with UK legislation), it appears probably that the aim behind the appliance can be to arrange a VPP system within the UK. Tesla already runs VPPs in Texas and California.
So, all sounds good, proper? This can be a helpful product, and it will possibly assist the UK confront a problem it might want to face because it transitions to a cleaner grid. And, at a time when electrical energy costs are going up worldwide, extra competitors and suppleness in vitality markets can solely be factor.
The one drawback? Everybody hates Elon Musk. Rather a lot.
Because it seems, Ofgem has been swamped with hundreds of feedback opposing Tesla’s plan, because of a marketing campaign that claims Musk shouldn’t be allowed to get wherever close to UK’s electrical energy provide.
The marketing campaign was launched by the group Greatest for Britain, which payments itself as “the researchers, knowledge scientists, strategists, and activists, fixing the issues Britain faces after Brexit.”
It arrange an motion marketing campaign permitting Brits to ship a letter to Ofgem stating their opposition to Tesla’s plan.
The letter argues that Musk has confirmed, by way of his latest political exercise, that he’s not within the basic wellbeing of the populace, however fairly in “enriching himself”pushing his personal agenda.” It accuses him of “harmful incompetence or wilful neglect,” and says that these needs to be “disqualifying qualities for entrance into our vitality markets.”
For background, whereas Musk claimed to be working to cut back US authorities waste (when he really elevated the deficit), he in truth spent that point advising the US to defund entities investigating his illegal actions.
The letter additionally mentions the “fast unfold of misinformation, hatred and conspiracy theories within the UK and throughout the broader world” on twitter since Musk spent $44 billion to purchase the corporate (that later dropped to a worth nearer to $15 billion – his latest buy of it from himself however). After Musk bought the platform, hate speech has flourished there.
Not one of the factors made by the letter concentrate on Tesla’s enterprise as an entire, however fairly solely on its CEO’s dangerous actions.
As of yesterday, Greatest for Britain says 8,462 individuals had used it to contact Ofgem to voice their opposition to the plan. Public remark stays open till Friday, August 22.
Musk’s actions proceed to hurt Tesla’s enterprise
This isn’t the primary time Tesla has obtained native opposition for enterprise offers resulting from Musk’s poor public persona. In Might, Australians voiced opposition to a plan to construct a battery manufacturing facility and Tesla showroom, ~95% of which opposed the plan (with some selection Australian language showing within the public feedback).
And simply yesterday, the Austin American-Statesman reported opposition to Tesla’s tax breaks from residents of the county the place its Texas Gigafactory is positioned.
Individually, Musk has obtained pushback within the UK and elsewhere for his assist for excessive rightwing and racist political figures, each within the US the place he gave a whole lot of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in bribes to a treasonous felon who tried to overthrow the US authorities, and within the UK the place he has given each rhetorical and financial assist for a violent racist fraudster who has been imprisoned a number of instances.
His unambiguous Nazi salutes, agreeing with a protection of Hitler’s actions within the Holocaust, assist for German neo-Nazis, and plenty of different white supremacist statements didn’t assist, both.
Past his affiliation with racist politics, he has additionally immediately unfold misinformation about local weather change himself, regardless of this being a contradiction of Tesla’s mission. Musk has even stated that his personal latest actions are “not good for America or the world.”
The results of these actions has been to drive protests towards the corporate, embarrass homeowners and destroy Tesla’s model status.
Within the UK particularly, Tesla gross sales have fallen by 60% year-over-year, in accordance with the latest July numbers. Tesla gross sales present comparable tendencies in most territories wherein the corporate sells, with Tesla gross sales down globally regardless of a rising world EV market.
Nonetheless, regardless of Elon Musk demonstrably being the drawback with Tesla proper now, his family and friends on Tesla’s board lately gave him a ~$29 billion payout, claiming that it might “energize and focus” the corporate’s dangerous CEO.
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