The energy transition hangs from the neighbours' balcony

Column: from the perspective of a parent who arranges everything alone, so this too.

The energy transition has a communication problem: it is told in amounts of money most people simply don't have. Heat pumps costing fifteen thousand euros, roof renovations, subsidy desks with waiting lists long enough to raise a second child in. Anyone running a household single-handedly reads those stories the way you read travel features about Patagonia, beautiful, no doubt important, not for now.

And then, one day, two panels appeared on the neighbours' balcony. No scaffolding, no installer, no quote in triplicate. A bracket, a plug, done.

The balcony panel may well be the most democratic piece of the energy transition in existence, and it is no coincidence that it has topped the trend lists at Risegoods for months. A set of two panels, around 800 watt-peak combined, produces 600 to 700 kilowatt-hours a year in the Netherlands. That doesn't power a whole household, and nobody needs to pretend it does. What it does cover is precisely the consumption that never stops: the fridge, the router, the forest of chargers a family turns out to own these days. In carbon terms it saves 200 to 270 kilos of CO2 a year. The emissions from manufacturing the panels are paid off after about a year and a half; after that they run virtually clean for two decades.

Earth-shattering it is not. It is, however, more than most people will do for the climate this year, and it requires no bank, no roof of your own and no partner to plough through quotes. At most, a message to the landlord.

There is another return, harder to quantify. Children are poor listeners when it comes to stories about the planet, but they are excellent watchers. An app on the kitchen table showing what the sun earned today does more than ten well-intentioned conversations. Energy becomes something you can make, not just something a bill arrives for every month. That idea doesn't wear out; the panels last twenty years, the idea probably longer.

The technology, for the rest, isn't worth studying. Face south or south-west, avoid shade, run the washing machine during the day, that's all.

What remains is an observation for the evening walk: count the balconies in the street that catch sun all day and give nothing back. Somewhere in that row, next year, the first panel will appear. The only real question is why it should be the neighbours'.