Energy

Energy is back in the spotlight; it's right at the centre of political debate in the UK. Firstly, the Labour party announced that if it was elected in 2015, it would apply a price freeze to energy companies until a more effective regulatory and price- fixing system could be established. Unsurprisingly, energy companies pointed out that such a move would leave them vulnerable to raw material hikes with no prospect of recovering their margins; such risk would blight potential investment.

Now, following concern expressed about recent energy bill increases, former Prime Minister John Major has ‘bounced’ the Government to announce energy price reductions. Interestingly this has included cutting the so-called ‘green tariffs’ built into energy bills. This is an indication that green concerns are slipping down the order and is perhaps a clearer reflection of the political mood, namely one of scepticism over climate change and carbon taxes in a time of economic downturn. Obviously, it is neither comfortable nor desirable to find pensioners having to choose between heating and eating over the winter season; nonetheless, there is apparently a latent reluctance to invest in green energy or a low-carbon economy until it seems absolutely necessary. Nuclear power is back on the agenda as a way forward, even if some new power stations seem to be financed by China and France.

Part of the political reluctance must come from conflicting engineering ‘stories’. Most prominent is that early technologies such as on-shore wind farms are inefficient, even counter-productive, as they contain high amounts of embedded carbon. It is often the case that early –adopters are disadvantaged as technology advances, but that is the way.

There have been a lot of press stories recently; the Financial Times ran a full pull-out section with contributions arguing both ways. But public opinion still seems interested in sustainable options. As always, the devil is in the detail; some quick-fix solutions are dubious in the longer view. But the fundamental course we are on does need to be fairly settled. At the moment we are hesitating, with neither the alternative energy sector nor more traditional energy companies having a clear plan on what to do. This does cause difficulties for investment and planning. We have seen how the Australian government who was ‘brave’ and ‘out there’ in carbon reduction terms has now backtracked. The US is feeling energy secure, buoyed by new reserves and using fracking, OPEC has tightened its grip on prices and production and Russia is similarly increasing output and exploring (openly controversially) the deep arctic.

It seems apparent that energy needs and security are driving ever greater carbon production. What no government can afford is for the ‘lights to go out’. To see a shift in this route will require some real determination, international resolve and perhaps some new science.

David Jackman

IPCC

I found the most inspiring statement from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)'s 5th Assessment report, published on 1 October 2013 following its recent meeting in Copenhagen. The document came to the conclusion that ‘it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century’.

There you have it, as good as you will ever get from scientists (who have to wrap findings up in the language of statistical significance); a conclusion from 209 lead authors and 50 review editors from 39 countries and more than 600 contributing authors from 32 countries: climate change is a result of human activity. That leaves climate change doubters little room to manoeuvre.

And if there was any doubt left, the report concludes that:

‘Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, sea level has risen, and the concentrations of greenhouse gases have increased’. It does not matter that in the last 10 years temperature increases have stabilised; this is probably due to the redistribution of energy within the oceans and biosystems. In the Northern Hemisphere, 1983–2012 was the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years. The long-term trend is clear.

Almost the entire globe has experienced surface warming. Some of the evidence is startlingly clear. For example: ‘Over the last two decades, the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets have been losing mass, glaciers have continued to shrink almost worldwide, and Arctic sea ice and Northern Hemisphere spring snow cover has continued to decrease in extent.’ Over the period 1901–2010, global mean sea levels rose by 0.19 [0.17 to 0.21] m. Scientists allege that ‘CO2 concentrations have increased by 40% since pre-industrial times’.

What of the future? The headlines are not happy reading. Global surface temperatures are likely to rise by 1.5 – 2 °C by 2100. Heat will penetrate from the surface to the deep ocean and affect ocean circulation and many other aspects of the climate’s climatic patterns. Perhaps most significant is the prediction that temperatures will continue to rise for centuries to come, even if we stop carbon emissions right now.

One aspect also worth mentioning is that the effects of climate change will not affect everyone in the same way or to the same extent. For example, the contrast in precipitation between wet and dry regions and between wet and dry seasons will increase. This is likely to have a relatively harsher impact on fragile environments and render uninhabitable those areas where some of the least wealthy and least resilient communities live such as sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia. How will the world's communities react? The IPCC’s report is not designed to answer these sorts of questions, but in light of the evidence, the answers seem pretty self-explanatory.

David Jackman 

Cycling

The cycling ‘Tour of Britain’ hit town on the 186km Cumbria stage; it was the second day of the 8-day event that has been run since 2004. As the cyclists passed by our village, they grouped around a breakaway and large chasing pack. They were cheered on by a huge fanfare and hundreds of onlookers straining to catch a glimpse of Sir Bradley Wiggins or Mark Cavendish. By the time they reached us they looked pretty bedraggled, having already taken on several steep climbs, including the 250 metres straight up at the challenging Honister Pass, in pouring rain no less.

The enthusiasm surrounding this year’s tour reflects how cycling has become very popular since the 2012 Olympics. I don’t recall such coverage on TV or locally before, but following Team GB’s success on the track and road, everyone is much more aware of the sport.

But it’s not just competitive cycling that has responded to the ‘Olympic effect’ as I like to term it. In a report commissioned by British Cycling and Team Sky, 28% of those surveyed had been inspired to acquire bikes or other equipment by the games; moreover, levels of participation have risen amongst both regular and occasional cyclists. Commuting by bike has also risen. As British Cycling states: "10 mph will get you to your workplace 2.5 miles away in 15 minutes. There are no traffic jams. No CO2 emissions”.

As well as the environmental benefits, there are also health benefits. “When you're cruising along steadily at 10mph you're burning fuel at an equivalent rate of 879 miles per gallon.Or to put it another way, for your five mile round trip, you’ll burn around 250 calories per day. That's 1250 calories per week, without going to the gym. Win, win.” The British Cycling website is full of top tips on how to start cycling.

In the London cycle hire scheme (often known as ‘Boris Bikes’), there were 998,755 cycle hires just in July 2013, with 22.6 million hires since the scheme got rolling in December 2010! Roughly half of these are casual users choosing a better way to get around, and the rest are probably commuters. Waterloo station has emerged as the busiest docking station.

This trend shows how attitudes have changed. Being more sustainable has many pay-offs. Widening participation is one thing, maintaining the Olympic legacy is another. As the cyclists found yesterday as they powered up the final stretch of the well-named ‘Beast Banks’ in Kendal, the last lap can be the hardest! The race statistics themselves seemed to confirm this, as leader Thomas Lovkvist was overtaken on the Bank by German rider Gerald Ciolek in the last 20 seconds.

David Jackman

Fracking and Politics – Like Moths to a Gas Flare

I’ve mentioned before how the idea of “green-ness” has fallen out of vogue, in part because as a buzzword it was never going to last, in part because of other distractions in political and media agendas. Global warming has been a footnote in the news, I feel, for at least the last four years, a period dominated by the financial crisis and punctuated in the popular imagination only with the obtuse and inconclusive Copenhagen and Johannesburg talks. The focus of reporting on such individual events cements the idea that environmental degradation is an issue for campaigns rather than system changes. For another example of short-termism in policy-making, consider the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011. As shocking and tragic this disaster was, panic over the potential for nuclear power to go wrong prompted Germany (and more understandably, Japan) to mothball their nuclear energy programs. Sustainable energy is unlikely to quickly make up the shortfall, so to placate a worried public and keep their power on requires regression to gas, oil or coal – all ‘dirtier’ forms of energy than nuclear. In short, climate change isn’t sexy any more, and renewable energy isn’t a vote winner.

The reason, then, that the current government has fallen so keenly upon the prospect of fracking – the process of fracturing rocks with highly-pressurised water and chemicals to release the gas entombed within - is that it is a political panacea. Fracking produces natural gas, which is touted as the cleanest fossil fuel and so limits the damage to the UK’s green credentials. Anecdotes about flaming tap water and polluted groundwater in fracked areas have failed to fundamentally derail the idea.

 Fracking also reduces, to an extent, the UK’s dependence on Middle Eastern oil and Russian gas (a reduction which could be especially substantial if the tentative explorations in the Falklands bear oily fruit). Energy independence, abundant, cheap power and the prospect of eager private investment in developing the fracking industry (subsidies notwithstanding) seem healthy for the Treasury, and so the taxpayer. The idea of home-made British energy also has the happy side effect of feeding the current enthusiasm for ill-defined “Britishness”, which the state naturally encourages and co-opts as a tool for winning the votes of patriots.

Being less cynical, fracking does sound like a good deal for the UK. It may well offer cheaper power , ideally with well-regulated production, as well as many jobs in, for one, Lancashire, where according to the BGS and energy company Cuadrilla, “1,300 trillion cubic feet of gas lie, which would be enough to supply the country for at least 43 years, even if only 10% of reserves can be extracted” (via The Guardian).

But the problem that this article is trying to point out is that falling back on fossil fuels, while useful in the short-term, reinforces the idea that climate change is a problem to be dealt with in the future, or by someone else. Fracking is an enormously useful tool to side-line the environment in public discourse, and to set back the environmentalist agenda in the time lag in which new legislation and regulation is developed. The only other opponents are the nimbyists – and perhaps the fundamental question is that in a time when everything is infused with economics, can anything prevent a return to fossil fuels?

Alex Jackman

Why bother with green? - A young person’s perspective

I confess: I’m at best cynical, at worst apathetic when it comes to green issues. This might not be the expected position of a geography student, less one who is supposed to be a green officer in the Geography Society. My teenage years came at the height of the green craze; the ink was still drying on the Kyoto agreements, “global warming” was always a valid answer, and the cool kids pored over atlases to work out which major cities would end up underwater. My teaching was saturated with green issues, especially global warming. I was disappointed to learn that drawing diagrams of the greenhouse effect is not a recognised skill on LinkedIn, as this renders useless ten years of sitting through geography and double science.

But after years of indoctrination, I still don’t feel particularly engaged and energised by these problems, important though they are. Why? To make this article work, we’ll have to both assume that I convey the true feelings of my age group, and ignore the point that my disengagement is merely the natural apathy of the privileged polluter – this is itself a symptom of other problems. With that out the way, I’ll get on with my excuses.

Firstly, the hype surrounding “greenness”, the shorthand for environmental responsibility and awareness, has died down. The media machine has ground onwards to other topics, and now we discuss the economy rather than the environment. Why, as a student, do I care about the long-term environment when they’re raising my tuition fees and I’ll need a job? This is in response to, and supports, a changed political agenda and public discourse. Both have lurched from environmental crisis to security crisis to financial crisis.  I’ll try to resist being a typical student and referring to “a book that I read at uni”, but in each case the discourse of crisis has enabled governments to pass drastic legislation, and has normalised a state of crisis in the public imagination.

Secondly, the flaws in the entire project of limiting environmental degradation have become increasingly apparent. Carbon trading lets major polluters continue polluting, while geopolitical manoeuvring (the US at Kyoto, China at Copenhagen) makes global agreement on global issues seem impossible. I feel unable to influence policy at any scale, yet my personal contributions seem so small as to be meaningless. Who cares if I recycle that pizza box? The Chinese just opened another coal-fired power station!

The total effect is that green issues become less relevant, fading into the hum of the newsroom or buried in the cabinets of Whitehall. Despite more and more evidence of climate change (not the only, but the most dramatic, green issue), fatalism, cynicism and short-term outlooks prevail. Immediately, financial viability (read: cost-cutting) and marketisation are more relevant than sustainability. There is no easy cure. There needs to be a mature restatement of the absolute and crucial relevance of our environment, and the fact of our relationship with it. But even if this is already on-going, mature statements do not get attention – increasingly, larger debates about the environment take place only after crises. Public and politicians addressed nuclear fuel after Fukushima, industrial pollution and regulation after the Deepwater Horizon, climate change after Hurricane Katrina.
Meanwhile I, young person, am disengaged from the political power needed to make substantial changes, see green issues become irrelevant and ignored, and I am distracted by problems which are closer to home and easier to grasp. And, (to predict another crisis) it is my cynicism that could be the killing blow for attempts to sustain environmental debate and protection in the years to come.

World Environment Day, and what followed!

World Environment Day (WED) passed a few days ago, on the 5^th of June; did you notice? Not even the often-meaningful Google icon for that day recognised this global event; instead we were reminded of the 295^th birthday of the (undoubtedly highly skillful) furniture maker, Thomas Chippendale.

Nevertheless, things did happen. A glance at the WED website shows that events took place as far afield as Mongolia (the ‘host’ country celebrating its first wind farm) and Somalia (one of the world’s poorest countries). The slogan for the awareness-raising campaign this year, organised by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) was: THINK-EAT-SAVE; REDUCING YOUR FOOTPRINT; this made reference to the fact that a third of the world’s food production, 1.3 billion tons, is wasted and thrown away each year. This is a tragedy of monumental proportions when you consider that 1 in 7 of us go hungry.

The spotlight was on the unnecessary pressure this creates on the areas of land under cultivation and the demand on fresh water supplies. Did you know that it takes 1,000 litres of water to produce 1 litre of milk? I didn't.

How effective campaigns like this are is hard to say. I suspect that it is their cumulative effect that has an impact, not just one event. This shows in so many different ways. In Singapore, where regular readers will know I spend part of my year, they have been celebrating 25 years of ‘going green’. In particular, the growing of trees and opening of public spaces is important in an island crammed with people and a growing industry. The aim is for 85% of the population to be less than 400 metres from a public park by 2030. Lee Kuan Yew, the country’s founding prime minister, has planted a tree symbolically every year since 1963 and did so again this year.

Ban Ki-moon, the UN Secretary General, has also launched an initiative this month to implement a seamless transition from the Millennium Development Goals that expire in 2015 to new Sustainable Development Goals for 2015 to 2030. These goals will be partly informed by a recently published Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) agenda which aims to tackle poverty alongside promoting environmental protection.

There is environmental action taking place everywhere, both co-ordinated toward a common global goal and informal or commercially driven. For example, I happened upon an interview yesterday featuring the Head of Sustainability of Procter and Gamble. Therein he explained how the improving technologies in cleaning products, allowing for 30 degrees Celsius washes and using less packaging, lessened resource usage for families and the environment. This is one of countless steps improving the situation; check company sustainability reports if you are interested.

But then the real world bites back. Despite all the good news, who would have thought that just a few days later in Singapore we would be heading for the greatest environmental crisis the city-state has faced so far? I usually submit this blog from under a palm tree in the sun. I am now sitting inside my hotel room with no sun visible because I am advised it is unsafe to go outdoors. The smog is so dense that I can barely see across the road. It is like a vision of the apocalypse. Unless you can remember the London smog of the 1930s and 1950s, you would have to see pictures on the news or web to believe it.

Most people in the street (and some inside) are now wearing masks if they can get one; I have failed so far, as the shops here are sold out! There is a possibility that all outside workers will be told to stay at home. The psi index of pollution is currently 400, near the highest point ever reached. To give you some perspective, anything above 300 is considered hazardous!

The choking haze comes from the very problem WED was trying to highlight. Clearing forest areas on the Indonesian island of Sumatra for agricultural plantations and grazing. Both large corporations and small holders start fires in the dry season and let them run riot across the indigenous forest only a few miles away across The Straits. There has been no rain for days. The authorities are considering cloud seeding but the problem could last for weeks.

This is having a real economic impact. Tourists are staying away, businesses cannot function properly, people are falling ill and hospitals are filling. It is expected to cost the economy millions, not to mention the cost in terms of health provision and the impact on individuals' health. Long-term, it will have an effect on business reputation, as well as place a strain on diplomatic relations between Indonesia and its neighbours.

This is a huge and harsh reminder of the reality of sustainability. It is far more pressing on the imagination and conscience than any number of special events and global agreements. One aspect of food pressure and deforestation is being brought sharply into focus in a developed economic hub: No one is immune; we are all on the same planet.

Is this a view of things to come? If so, I suggest we work together to do all we can.

David Jackman

Sustainability?

Undeniably sustainability is a word used to mean long lasting. However, it dawns on me that at the age of 17, long lasting reaches as far as applying for a job. Sustainability is a choice more than a necessity; one doesn’t have to think long-term because, simply, there is no immediate benefit from doing something that doesn’t aid the present. Why is it that, currently, recycling seems like a superfluous undertaking when it should be recognised as a responsibility to society? Why is it that energy saving weeks (in school) act as novelty token gestures to satisfy our green awareness? Essentially there is no tangible perceptible reward for being sustainable. There is no instantaneous change because the effects are for the long-term. Yes, the occasional recycled pencil case or recycling bin might cross my path, yet it provides no real motivation to endlessly sort rubbish, prohibit 4x4’s and deter me from my nearest goal. Absolutely, sustainability doesn’t appeal.

I use sustainability as a word to assuage my guilt or promote an argument and I fail to put sustainability in the present. Sustainability is the capacity to endure, yet to endure we must begin (being sustainable). All too often the assumption is that all sustainability is positive, and to an extent there can be no flaw in thinking about future generations, but, when this detracts from the richness of life that each of us desires than surely this is cause to presuppose that sustainability is time wasting and thinning our limited time on earth. Obviously sustainability means different things in different mediums, but the question remains the same (whether it is business sustainability or ones carbon footprint): why is sustainability worth fighting for?

I too ‘endorse the idea of starting small’[1] but where is the impetus. Essentially, when thinking of sustainability in ‘green’ terms, it is fighting a losing battle. The polluting world we have constructed is far too developed to deconstruct and reverse its corrosive effects. We can slow effects admittedly, but inevitably one must accept that with growing population, whatever we do the quell pollution in, for instance, Britain or our own homes; energy consumption elsewhere is increasing quicker, so there is no improvement. Why should I recycle two cans of beans when GlaxoSmithKline is building a new factory in Ulverston? It seems to be like disarmament in the 1920’s; unless everyone universally disarms then no one will do it. Yes we agree it’s a fine idea, nonetheless we don’t want to move first, and thus we keep arming (or negating sustainability). If I don’t feel that everyone is making the same efforts as me and giving as much time as I am, why bother? To assuage guilt by means of ‘five minutes a day’ [2] doing ‘something green’? Well not if GlaxoSmithKline feels no culpability.  Yes, this case isn't immediately transferable to business, but arguably, why would a business reduce short-term profits to maintain smaller profits over 100 years, when bluntly the people working there won’t receive the award. This raises moral questions about how much we value the future over our own personal gain but essentially it brings me back to my first point: why doesn't sustainability appeal, and now ,more importantly, how can we make it appeal?

There is no easy way to make people aid something they will never experience and will never know about, but inherently there is a desire to leave a legacy. What should be promoted is the power of legacy and the prospect of people in 2120 admiring the ’17-year-old boy who recycled his whole life, so that we could live in a better world’. Thus, sustainability should be passed down, recycled through generations, so that despite it not being universal, it becomes tradition or your inheritance. Legacy appeals!

Matthew David Llewellyn Jackman

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[1] http://green24.com/aboutus.php

[2] Ibid