Category Archives: comment

understanding renewables

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Interesting to watch the reposnse to yesterdays article (Revealed:cover up plan on energy target) in the Guardian  with  a flurry or posts to blogs, letters, responses from government and eidtorials.

This is being well covered by Phil Clarke over at Sustainability Blog,

Strong stuff in Monday’s Guardian, where economics correspondent Ashley Seager takes the Government to task for its encouragement (or lack of it) of renewable technologies. He offers a stark contrast between us and Germany, where renewables now makes up 13% of all energy compared to our 4.6%. Seagar reckons we are tinkering at the edges with our botched low carbon buildings programme and the renewables obligation (RO)system, which requires energy producers to use a growing propertion of renewable sources. “Britain’s climate change strategy, such as it is, is crumbling,” he concludes.

What is evident is that a whole new environmental and energy economy is emerging that will have great importance for the built environment and its future energy usage strategies.

Need to rethink carbon offsetting?

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Recent reports that trees may not be the solution to carbon offsetting appeared a few days ago in Grist (Their bark is worst for our blight) and in Live Science (Trees may not fix global warming) may prompt a rethink of the carbon offsetting appraoch to addressing carbon reduction. This is based on 10 year research by scientists at Duke University,  North Carolina

So those projects and facilities looking to achieve carbon neutral or zero tragets through off setting need to be very confident the route they are taking is sound.

Although critical of carbon off putting, this report in WorldChanging, Rural Biogas, Global Carbon Market of a grass roots initiative gives inspiration, along the lines of a contraction and conevrgence approach which looks to be a more appropriate alternative to carbon off-putting

personal carbon allowance – government response

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 It was nice to receive an email from 10 Downing Street, in response to an e-petition I signed recently on the theme of personal carbon disclosure of ministers.  Whilst the response from Number 10 did not directly respond to the petition, the response is none the less very interesting:

Following an initial scoping study conducted by the Centre for Sustainable Energy, the Government is now undertaking a work programme designed to assess whether or not a personal carbon allowance is a realistic and workable policy option.

The work programme will address high-level questions such as public acceptability, technical feasibility, cost, and whether/how such a scheme could interact with other emissions reduction policy instruments. It is being designed to complement the work being undertaken by researchers and academics, such as The Tyndall Centre for Climate Change, the Environmental Change Institute and the Royal Society for Arts.

The Climate Change Bill contains enabling powers that would allow the government to set up trading schemes to either limit activities producing greenhouse gas emissions, or to encourage activities leading to the reduction/removal of greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere.

In theory it should be possible for government to introduce a personal carbon trading system using these powers. However this would be right on the edge of what these powers are designed for and, in practice, it is unlikely that government would do so. What is clear is that a personal carbon trading scheme could not, and should not, be introduced without a comprehensive period of public engagement and debate.

The Earth fights back

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A real life 70’s style disaster movie script…

Never mind higher temperatures, climate change has a few nastier surprises in store. Bill McGuire says we can also expect more earthquakes, volcanoes, landslides and tsunamis.

Guardian Unlimited
Tuesday August 7 2007

Future of construction transport – something that’s better for the planet

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A number of items in the news / other websites and blogs have given me cause for thought on construction transport.

  • Procurement for construction will evaluate construction transport miles and travel plans
  • Defra claim only two thirds of solid materials delivered are used on any site – so perhaps we only need one third of heavy construction transport on the road? (and I recall from somewhere that construction counts for nearly 40% of all transport on our roads, ie both materials and people)
  • Low emission zones will become common place in cities – increasing the cost of construction transport and deliveries
  • The Oil Depletion Protocol is driving countries to become free of oil dependence – with Sweden’s Minister for Sustainable Development announcing in 2006 that Sweden will be completely oil free by 2020. We could learn alot from watching Sweden’s construction industry address this objective.

And finally to do something positive, Change Your World is asking you to swap just one car trip from 1-7 July and choose something that’s better for the planet instead. Sign up and pledge at Change Your World. If we all give up just one car journey that week we’ll reduce car traffic by 10%, and importantly get an insight to the challenges construction travel and transport face.

And for a view of a future carbon free transport city – Dutch city Groningen. of 185,000 proves that bicycle transportation can reign supreme: people there make about 150,000 trips by bicycle every day.

i-think comment – where do we go after Kyoto?

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The i-think team have started regular news and comments service on climate change issues that affect us in the built environment.  If you want to get involved in these debates then head over to the ithink site. Join i-think and get comments by email.

Where do we go after Kyoto?

Last week world leaders gathered at the G8 Summit in Germany, where the issue of tackling climate change was at the very top of the international agenda. With the Kyoto Protocol due to end in 2012, one of the most heavily debated topics was how to cut greenhouse gas emissions in the longer term.

Led by Germany, and in line with the current position of the UK government, one of the most ambitious targets included halving current carbon emissions by 2050 with a view to keeping global warming down to no more than 2°C. But, when there are divisions even within the G8, how achievable is this?

Although all the leaders are united in their aim of “taking strong and early action to tackle climate change”, George Bush has insisted that the US won’t agree to any specific targets unless other major polluters, pointing the finger squarely at China and India, make an equally binding commitment.

Mutiny in the ranks? Or a clear headed ultimatum that we need to work in partnership if we are to have any significant impact in tackling climate change?

Certainly Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper has expressed his disappointment with the US, saying that’s it’s difficult to meet targets if “your major partner does not have those targets too.”

It seems to be generally accepted that we are all going to have to make some major changes in the way we operate if we are to meet the environmental challenges of the future, and this includes looking beyond our own immediate spheres of influence.

As Tony Blair said, referring to the ‘post-Kyoto’ agreement, “there isn’t going to be an agreement until its got America and China in it.” So the word ‘partnership’ appears to be key here.

Although at the end of the summit German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated that the G8 had established a “clear mandate” on tackling climate change, specific next steps are rather less clear. Quite what the post-Kyoto agreement involves, nobody seems to know, other than the same general acceptance that we need to cut carbon emissions.

We have five more years of Kyoto, but at the end of it will we really see any definite changes? And where do we go from there? Whatever the government decides, it seems that we have reached a point where decisive action is finally a must if our global economy is to remain competitive into the future.