Past generations have taught us to cut out waste so why not apply that to energy? - Yorkshire Post Letters

You know the joke: when I was 18, I was convinced my parents knew nothing. By the time I was 36, they seemed to have learned a lot. In truth I’m still learning from them now, even though they are, sadly, no longer with us.

Growing up in the long shadows of the Great Depression and the World Wars, my parent’s generation were obsessed with reducing waste; we should be too.

What if avoiding waste was our primary focus as we increase renewable energy rather than worrying about when the wind doesn’t blow?

We have no end of options here, we just need to exploit them: improved grid infrastructure to get the energy to where it’s needed; encouraging energy use outside peak hours to waste less gas; using battery storage and pumped hydroelectric storage and exporting energy for profit at times of excess. These are all obvious.

Less so, is storing energy as heat. A lot of our energy is used to provide heat in our homes, offices and even industries. This offers many opportunities.

All the energy used to power our data centres ends up as heat and treated as waste - it should be used. Heat pump technology can turn even low-grade heat into a useful resource. We can also use spare electricity to drive chemical reactions that can later be reversed to deliver heat energy. Heated sand or bricks using spare wind power can be stored and even used to drive steam turbines for electricity.

By turning the problem on its head and driving down waste, we expose so many options. My parents' generation still have much to teach us.