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When will we get serious on energy efficiency?
Peter Madden, August 15th, Forum founders
The Spanish Government recently announced an ambitious energy efficiency package to cut reliance on fossil fuels. Measures included cutting the speed limit on roads, regulating temperatures for air conditioning, running more Metro services and handing out 49 million free energy-saving light bulbs.Here in the UK, we pay constant lip-service to energy efficiency, but consistenly fail to raise our ambition. The recent energy White Paper, like its predecessors, stated that: “The starting point for our energy policy is to save energy. It is often the cheapest way of reducing carbon emissions, certainly in the short-term.”
We now have a visionary and challenging renewables strategy in the UK, which will see a tenfold increase in renewable energy, and draw in funding of £100 million. Yet energy efficiency still seems to be buried in the bowels of Defra. There is no serious plan and no serious money.
What is the problem? I know that energy efficiency, and the multiple small steps it requires, it is not as exciting as the shiny new renewables technolgies. But it is a better investment. It delivers cheaper carbon savings. And it can be socially progressive. Surely it is time for a serious policy?
Coal vs nuclear
Jonathon Porritt, August 8th, Forum founders
So, here are the offending words:
“I have now reached the point at which I no longer care whether or not the answer is nuclear. Let it happen – as long as its total emissions are taken into account, we know exactly how and where the waste is to be buried, how much this will cost and who will pay, and there is a legal guarantee that no civil nuclear materials will used by the military. We can no longer afford any rigid principle but one: that the harm done to people living now and in the future most be minimised by the most effective means, whatever they might be”.
Source: one George Monbiot, scourge of literally all and sundry, especially of those who are perceived by him to be “betraying the cause”.
Context: George is (probably even now) at the Climate Camp outside Kingsnorth in Kent, energetically supporting the campaign against E.ON’s proposal to build a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth – with or without Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) built in.
Common ground: this is a campaign with which I am in total agreement – planning permission for E.ON at Kingsnorth would usher in a new and utterly disastrous lease of life for coal in the UK. There may be up to eight further coal-fired power stations in the pipeline. The fact that BERR would appear to be minded to go ahead with such a proposal tells you all you need to know about the Government’s head-long retreat from what we now know to have been the high point of sustainable energy thinking in the 2003 Energy White Paper.
Disagreement: as George says, a horror story. But does one’s horror at one horror story justify turning a blind eye to another – equally horrifying – horror story? “Yes”, says George, because our every sinew must now be strained to combat the threat of resurgent coal. “No”, say I, because a resurgent nuclear industry constitutes (almost) as grave a threat to the emergence of truly sustainable energy strategies as coal does.
I am putting the ‘almost’ in there to build a bridge back to George’s startlingly irresponsible and throw-away ‘green light’ for nuclear. As you can see, he is trying to hedge that improbable endorsement with a few conditions that both he and I would agree are all but impossible for the nuclear industry to comply with.
But a communicator as astute and clever as George should (and surely does) know the difference between a ‘Yes … If’ position and a ‘No … Unless’ position.
Does all this mean an irrevocable split in the Green Movement? Yes and No. Yes, because there are indeed widely diverging views about the potential contribution that nuclear might make to a low-carbon world. No, because there always have been such diverging views, and we are all (for the most part!) united in our anger and disgust at the sheer stupidity of something like Kingsnorth.
So please do check out the Climate Camp 08 website. It’s excellent.
http://www.climatecamp.org.uk
Energy as an employer
Jonathon Porritt, July 25th, Forum founders
Great to see Al Gore out there last week refreshing his ‘Inconvenient Truth’ by challenging both Republicans and Democrats to raise their sights in the run-up to the November election. And his “100% renewables” should certainly achieve that particular goal!
Big emphasis in his campaign on jobs – and I’ve no doubt that’s going to become a huge issue here in the UK too. The Prime Minister himself is clearly alert to that reality, and liberally peppers his various energy–related speeches with references to the number of jobs that will be created in promoting different strategic priorities.
Bag-loads of salt required with these projections – most especially with the latest gob-smacker that a new nuclear programme in the UK would create around 100,000 jobs. Not a single one of the big energy companies involved as potential nuclear bidders has the first clue as to where those jobs are likely to come from.
Much better to work with the facts rather ditzy dreams. Where I am in the South West, for instance, there are now 2,900 FTE jobs in the renewable energy sector, up from 1,140 in 2005 – equivalent to an annual growth rate of around 37%. This amounts to £215 million of Growth Value Added today, up from £34 million in 2005. And that’s just the start – if the Government gets really serious about renewables, as indicated for the first time in the new draft Renewables Strategy.
It’s not just the potential growth in renewables that is threatened by today’s nuclear nonsense. All sorts of short term opportunities to rethink the current energy mix in the UK are likely to be over-looked by BERR (and indeed by investors). A month ago, for instance, Greenpeace published a fascinating report on industrial CHP which it commissioned from Poyry Energy Consulting which really should make the civil servants in BERR totally rethink their heat strategy (in so far as a heat strategy can be said to exist at all).
The report shows that at just nine industrial sites, the installation of mega CHP schemes would provide between 13,000 MW and 16,000 MW of electricity in providing the heat needed by the companies on those sites. 13,000 MW is the equivalent of eight new nuclear power stations.
And guess what? Lots of real jobs projected, no particular planning issues, no complex design challenges, no particular security risks and no legacy of nuclear waste to trouble future generations for thousands of years to come.
This is a post from Jonathon Porritt's blog, www.jonathonporritt.com
Evan Davis on radical thinking at Scholars' graduation
Alex Johnson, July 21st, Forum founders
An animated Evan Davis addresses the recent Scholars' graduation, using behavioural economics to demonstrate the importance of radical thinking to solve problems.
Can we shop our way to sustainability?
Richard Hardyment, July 14th, Projects
“Can we shop our way to sustainability?” was the topic for a lively seminar Forum for the Future held last Monday evening.
"Yes - under certain conditions" came the answer from the majority of our panel: Lord Adair Turner, the new Chairman of the Government’s Committee on Climate Change; Lucy Siegle from the Observer; and Lucy Neville-Rolfe from Tesco.
Environmental guru Roger Levett was more doubtful – a view shared by the delegates. Just 29 per cent answered “yes” to the question in our snap entry poll; support fell to 22 per cent in a post-event survey. So what persuaded our attendees – 100 thinkers from industry, academia and NGOs – that something more complex is required?
The solutions to sustainable consumption are clearly not as simple as our poll question implied. Widespread agreement emerged on the range of changes needed: better information to empower consumers; careful framing of the alternatives in supermarkets; and removing the most unsustainable products - "choice editing" – altogether from the shelves.
So what are the barriers to making sustainable consumption a reality today? How can we change consumer behaviour effectively? And what might be the ideal consumer products of the future? See our summary of the evening for further details.
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