Green Energy : Stuck in the Sidings

If you can imagine the engine for new, renewable and sustainable Energy systems as a train which should by now be thundering down the tracks, get this : it left the depot only to get stuck in the sidings.

Enough of the locomotive metaphors, already. On to the analysis. Here’s an excerpt from Catherine Mitchell’s fine book “The Political Economy of Sustainable Energy” (2008, 2010) :-

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James Delingpole : Following The Money

What makes James Delingpole tick ? Why does he take up such an unsupportable position ? Why is he prepared to risk appearing completely absurd ?

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100025341/climategate-mad-sunday/

I have been rubbing my chin and hmmming quietly to myself, as I to try to understand it, and I think I might have a thread of an idea : money, or rather, the use of money…

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Poepen is Gezond : The Rise of Poo Power

Sustainable Energy comes from doing what comes naturally. Wind, waves, sunlight. And pooping.

With some fairly minor adaptations to all sewage treatment plants, and a little AD – Anaerobic Digestion – we could hook up our off-gassing into the National Grid, and reduce our Fossil Gas use, big-time.

Watch this technology for meteoric rise. Cheap, cheerful, but slightly pongy. But they do BioGas in China and India all the time, and 2.4 billion Chinidians can’t be wrong.

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Carbon Taxation Is So Wrong

The theory behind Carbon Taxation is this : according to the “Principle of the Polluter Pays”, one of the guiding principles established by the global community in the early 1990s, environmental bads should be charged.

In other words, if you mess up, you should pay for it. And that includes Carbon Dioxide Emissions.

The trouble that arises is the cost “double whammy”.

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Carbon Trading Is So Wrong

So, the theory of Cap-and-Trade goes like this.

You set an upper Cap on Carbon Dioxide Emissions.

You dole out Carbon Dioxide Emissions Permits or Allowances. Or you sell them. Or you auction them.

Each year the amount of Carbon Dioxide Emissions Permits gets less and less.

Then a Market in Carbon will operate.

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The Investment Bump

Image Credit : Bankside Press

The big problem with re-tooling for the new Low Carbon world is not so much about changing Energy consumption behaviour, although that plays a part.

It’s not even really Energy supply behaviour, although that is probably more significant.

No, the key to the door to the greener future is investment behaviour.

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Clean Coal : Dirty Joke

Seven reasons why “Clean” Coal is dirty, dangerous and wicked, but not funny in the slightest.

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Cloud Ships. Yes, But…

Geoengineering. Sounds great. Treat the Earth like one big motoring machine, get under the hood (bonnet) and tinker with it.

But what if actually this is the equivalent of putting the Planet on a life support system ventilator, and the plug could be pulled at any time ?

How sustainable are some of the Geoengineering proposals ? Are they guaranteed to work ? Won’t they have knock-on side-effects ? Are they reversible if they prove unhelpful ? And how much will they cost ?

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10×10 : Cut Carbon 10% by 2010

The Campaign against Climate Change has been running a very thought-provoking extending compendium of ideas on how to reduce British Carbon Emissions by ten percent by (the end of) 2010, to which you are all welcome to contribute :-

http://portal.campaigncc.org/content/10-10-ban-domestic-flights

http://portal.campaigncc.org/content/10-10-ban-domestic-flights-0

http://portal.campaigncc.org/content/10-10-50-reduction-cost-public-transport

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Pizza Drop

What’s the opposite of a negative “anti-” protest against Fossil Fuels ? Why, it’s a negative “anti-” protest against losing jobs in Renewable Energy, with the best positive intentions.

The assortment of folks occupying the Vestas manufactory in Newport on the Isle of Wight are struggling to make a positive contribution to the future of British green collar jobs.

Alas, their sustainable and forward-thinking plan has met with summary dismissal – sackings by letters slipped under their pizzas in a delivery drop – according to the Press. The ultimate in snide micro-management.
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Milling the Wind : Revolution by Osmosis

There has been a welter of contentious reporting about Wind Power in the English-speaking world. Honestly, you would have thought there was something wrong with investing in energy infrastructure that starts to pay back within three years, the amount of bad press the poor little aeolian turbines have been getting.

“What happens when the wind stops blowing ?”, people ask with a supercilious sneer, or a grumphy guffaw, as if they know every last thing about the way the wind works all of a sudden.
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Wind Systems Are Go !

Little boy and girl engineers across the globe are starting a lifetime of fascination with wind turbines, playing with Trademarked miniature construction kits :-

http://hertenberger.co.za/?p=4831< ?A>

http://legosip.blogspot.com/2009/04/120409-lego-7642-garage-7686-helicopter.html

Durable plastic toy manufacturers can see which way the wind is blowing, even if rich landowners, Mr-Deal-or-No-Deal [1] and certain members of the CPRE [2] cannot :-

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/5850681/Wind-farm-to-be-built-on-borders-of-Peak-District.html
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The Low Carbon Transition #1 : It’s Gonna Cost Ya

There was a rash, a veritable rash of media articles last week about Ed Miliband’s Low Carbon Transition :-

http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/publications/lc_trans_plan/lc_trans_plan.aspx

It was an overwhelming torrent of fairly helpful and semi-accurate information, and it’s taken me a few days to wade through it to fish out some relevant threads.
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Roll Over Beethoven

Dear Reader,

You are politely asked to consider the connection between the following two pieces of information :-

http://blogs.ft.com/energy-source/2009/07/15/us-government-moves-carbon-capture-forward
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Gordon Brown’s Goodie Bag

Gordon Brown has announced possibly the single most important proposal on Climate Change Adaptation to date.

He went to London Zoo towards the end of June to announce a bold proposal for global funding. [ Why the Zoo ? Something to do with political overtones or biodiversity ? ]

What was heralded with praise and aplomb on that day has now been unpacked as containing some “fake” accounting, in terms of the British publicly funded contribution : funds being merely swapped from budget line to budget line.

Plus, part of the proposed funding is expected from the global Carbon Trade markets, and as we’ve seen so far from the European Trading Scheme, it is by no means certain that this will work as expected.

It might turn out to be not quite the goodie bag that Gordon Brown made out. If so, that’s a real shame, because this was meritable move.
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Throwing Caution To The Wind

This is possibly going to be Renewable Energy’s biggest week ever in UK history.

And we’re going to need all the Wind Power we can get to meet Ed Miliband’s lofty ambition.
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I’d Like To Thank

At the Oscars and the BAFTAS and so on, the winners, always bleary, always blubbing, always drunk, always start with an “I’d like to thank” speech, offering genuine (or coerced) gratitude very publicly to those who collaborated (or financed) their venture : “you made it all possible”.

In true TV award ceremony style, the British Government, plus “Special Adjunct” Tony Blair, in amongst their good work pursuing Energy Efficiency and True Renewables, appear to be virtually obliged to mention the Energy and Climate “solutions” of their closest lobbyists and corporate allies, or even relatives, in the case of Gordon Brown’s brother Andrew’s company Electricité de France :-
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Save Vestas

Received by e-mail

Dear Friend,

Again, could you circulate this as widely as possible, especially to people in London and on the South Coast. Apologies for cross posting.

If you possibly can, please join a rally to save the Vestas wind turbine plant, this Saturday 11 July 2009, 12 noon, St James Square, Newport, Isle of Wight (outside Millets)

PDFs OF LEAFLETS, POSTERS AND PETITION SHEETS AVAILABLE BY EMAILING INFO@CAMPAIGNCC.ORG
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New Labour Can Win

As usual at these events, I bumped into a couple of political activists of various flavours and persuasions at the Fabian Society conference “Six Months to Copenhagen”, today, held in the faded-yet-still-grand setting of the Foreign Press Association, just off The Mall in London.

[ The Mall is the street that links Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace. It's not a shopping centre ].
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Bjørn Lomborg Concedes Defeat

Bjørn Lomborg has been struggling to suppress action on Climate Change for some time now. He has reasoned that it is not such a big deal, and we would be better spending our resources and attention on other global ills.

Now, however, he’s proposing a universal Carbon Tax, in order to promote Renewable Energy – both Wind Power and Solar !

What’s gotten into the economist-man ? Has he been poisoned by teeth-whitening chemicals ? Has he finally seen the light ? Or does he think that anything is more workable than Cap-and-Trade ?
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Irony Bryony Worthington

[ UPDATE : Some of you have mentioned that you thought this piece was rather biting. So I put it under Bryony's nose and offered to change anything that she felt was inaccurate, personally distressing, or that she disagreed with or objected to on professional grounds. Changes are bolded. ]

At the The Guardian Climate Change Summit in London’s Russell Square’s Hotel Russell on Monday 15th June 2009, there was a large banner marked out with the name of the key sponsor of the event, E.On, but nobody at the large table underneath it to schmooze the attendees.

Perhaps they thought that the info pack in bright friendly red, orange and yellow colours would suffice in terms of communications. Perhaps they thought that they had enough of a hold on the event’s messaging by having their Chief Executive Officer Paul Golby speaking at one of the morning sessions.
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The New Green Army

As some of my more regular readers will be aware, I have been re-reading Nicholas Stern’s book “A Blueprint for a Safer Planet : How to Manage Climate Change and Create a New Era of Progress and Prosperity”.

He signed the book for me : “zero carbon or bust”, at his Book Launch at the London School of Economics, which, I think, shows his commitment to the “Defining Challenge of our Age” (now, who exactly said that first ? And about what ?)
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Climate Change and Social Justice

Britain is not Fair. The division between rich and poor is getting wider, and the number of those at the bottom of the stack is rising. This is going to have a significant impact on the ability of people in Great Britain to adapt to Climate Change policy.

Social measures must surely include public investment in de-Carbonising each home. At costs 100 times less than the announced new Nuclear Power programme, and an order of magnitude cheaper than the Carbon Capture and Storage demonstration projects, I think this shows excellent value for money as well as ethical rectitude.
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Carbon Offsetting : Legwarmers and Chiapas

In the field of women’s clothing, fashions spectacularly come and shamefacedly go. As one of the presenters said towards the end of the Carbon Offsetting report launch this evening, she is fearful that perhaps offsetting could be just a trend, a fashion statement that will bow out after a short while, like legwarmers and chiapas :-

http://www.newcarbonfinance.com/?p=services&i=voluntary

http://www.newcarbonfinance.com/download.php?n=State_of_Voluntary_Carbon_Markets_2009_May19.pdf&f=fileName&t=NCF_downloads
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Summer of Stupidity

It is from the Business pages of The Times Online that I learn that Ed Miliband possibly cannot read, and does not seem to be able to think clearly.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/utilities/article6401711.ece
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