Category Archives: Climate Change

Climate Change, Politics, Society

Incoherence in Government

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A story in this morning’s Guardian perfectly illustrates the policy incoherence that runs to the heart of the current government.

It concerns Britain’s National Cycling network, a linked chain of over 16,500 miles of cycleways which are used by half the number of people who currently use the trains each year.

Sustrans, the organisation responsible for the network, says it would cost £2.8bn to bring the paths up to scratch, as many are potholed or damaged, have difficult obstructions on them, or rejoin highways at difficult or dangerous places.

Meanwhile, we have a Government facing many significant challenges such as meeting the climate change goals, currently likely to be missed, and a National Health Service struggling to cope in the face of an ailing population made sick by obesity and dirty air.

One obvious part of the solution to these challenges is to reduce the amount we drive significantly and to encourage the population to exercise more.

So you would think getting the population on their bikes, as some of our Continental neighbours do so well, would be an obvious part of the plan.

More than half of the UK population lives within a mile of their nearest route and 4.4 million people used the Network last year, making 786m trips.

And each year the network saves the UK economy nearly £90m through reduced road congestion, according to Sustrans. Its health benefits save the NHS the equivalent of 2,206 nurses’ salaries, and leisure and tourist trips contribute £2.5bn to local economies, the charity claims.

The benefits are therefore obvious.

The Government’s response? In his recent budget, the chancellor, Philip Hammond, pledged £30bn for road improvements targeted primarily at motorists.

What about cycling?

Jesse Norman, the government’s cycling and walking minister, said: “This report shows that more needs to be done to make [the network] fully accessible, and that’s why earlier this year the government dedicated £1m to support initial work repairing and upgrading sections of this popular network.”

Doesn’t quite stack up, does it?

Climate Change, Economics

Climate disaster and how to avoid it

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Today the IPCC came out with its sternest warning yet about the dangers the world faces if global warming isn’t held to 1.5degC.

The thing is, we already know how Governments can do this. They tax the things they want less of and incentivise the things they want more of. This is simple and it works.

Take electric cars. If you want sales to grow fast bring in an effective incentive scheme. Norway leads the field on this. Its electric car policy saw a huge increase in the sales of electric cars. In 2015 22% of new car sales were electric and this is expected to grow to 30% in 2020. This was achieved through low road tax, VAT exemption, free parking for EVs and access to bus lanes, for example.

Or alternative energy.

Solar energy went from virtually nothing to 3% of the UK’s total energy generation between 2010 and 2017, driven by reducing costs for photovoltaics but mainly by Government incentives in the form of the Feed In Tariff. 

Government actions matter. Concerned about the rising cost the Government changed the policy in 2016 with the result that solar installations plummeted by 74% year on year in March 2016. Solar will continue to grow because the economics are getting better, but more slowly that it would have otherwise.

Windpower is another case in point. Antipathy to onshore wind has effectively stopped dead development of new onshore wind, the cheapest form of renewable energy. Offshore wind is still growing strongly, though, and is now bidding for contracts below that offered to nuclear projects.

Governments all have a balancing act to perform, trading off the immediate needs of the electorate, without whom they will not remain in power, and the longer-term needs of the country. 

To encourage the growth of more environmentally-friendly transport options – cycling, walking, public transport, electric cars – raising fuel taxes is a sensible policy. And yet petrol prices are a sensitive issue with the public so we have not had a rise in duty for nine years. 

The best hope of avoiding the short term trap is the law. The Climate Change Act of 2008 was a great example of this – in effect the Government willingly making a rod for its own back.

This law obligates the Government to reduce CO2 emissions to at least 80% below the 1990 baseline. This allows citizens and environmental groups to hold the Government’s feed to the fire if they don’t live up to this challenge. This doesn’t eliminate the short term decisions which will have a potential long-term detrimental effect, but it does make it far more likely that course correction is forthcoming. 

It will be interesting to see what this month’s budget tells us about the balancing act.

Climate Change

Climate Change: too true to be good

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Great summary today at the RSA of climate change from Environment Agency head Sir James Bevan. He was concise and chilling on the enormity of the challenge of climate change and the catastrophic consequences of failure to act decisively. 

Sir James Bevan, Environment Agency head
Sir James Bevan

Sadly, but predictably, he was less impressive in his assessment of the progress being made in Britain and around the world. As a political appointee it would be naive to expect him to point out the inconsistencies between the current Government’s language and its actions – support for fracking, removal of support for on-shore wind, reduction in financial incentives for solar energy, tax breaks for oil and gas, freeze on petrol tax etc, etc. 

“If we don’t get it right Britain will be neither, green, nor pleasant, nor even have much land”

He says governments have to tread carefully because of their electorates, but that hardly covers it. Still, the fact that he is laying out the challenge so starkly (“if we don’t get it right Britain will be neither, green, nor pleasant, nor even have much land”) is a surely good thing.

Business, Climate Change, Economics

More promise for solar breakthroughs

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Sample 3D Modules
Sample 3D Modules Credit: Allegra Boverman

The 3D solar towers being developed by MIT illustrate just how much further we have to go in stretching the still new technology of solar power. These experimental towers are up to 20 times as efficient as today’s flat roof panels.

If the British Government needed any further evidence that the plans for Hinkley Point are misguided, this should give them pause. Guaranteeing to pay three times today’s price for electricity for the next 30 years against a backdrop of dramatic increases in efficiency of solar power (which has already reached price parity in many places at today’s prices) is lunacy.

I would be tempted to conclude that the decision is ideological, but I just can’t see how a Conservative government getting into bed with a French state utility and the Chinese Government to make their white elephant a reality gels with the Conservative free market philosophy. Perhaps it is simply that having large grey boxes hidden away on the coasts are easier on the eye than rooftop solar panels and windfarms? Who knows.

Climate Change

Electricity self-sufficiency

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solar_panel_houses
Now here’s an idea: make it compulsory for all new buildings to be built with enough rooftop solar capacity to make them electricity-neutral throughout the year. At a stroke this would double the rate of growth of rooftop solar.

According to Government figures published in January 2014 there were around 500,000 rooftop installations of solar panels in the UK and given the speed with which they were being installed at least another 100,000 should have been added since.

The NHBC says there were just over 145,000 new homes built during 2014 and it looks likely the same or more will be built again this year (There have been calls for at least 300,000 homes to be built to ease the housing crisis). Adding solar to all those roofs could have a dramatic impact.

This is not a new idea. In 2012 Carlisle MP John Stevenson called on the Government to make it compulsory that all new-builds have solar panels, but to no effect.

Given the targets for emissions reduction set out in the Climate Change Act of 2008 simple measures like this should have appeal.

One potential issue is the added cost. However, a typical system costs between £5k and £8k and the average home in the UK now costs £272,000 so even assuming the whole sum was added to the price (unlikely given the economies of scale) that’s a hike of less than 3%. Given the fact that the panels effectively mean free electricity in the future any increased house price should be baked in for the future, too.

And it’s likely that the innovation spurred by all that activity will reduce costs in the future – solar costs have already plummeted as this chart illustrates nicely.

price-of-solar-power-drop-graph

 

 

Another concern is aesthetics, although this is again likely to be overblown. Firstly, what is aesthetically normal changes over time (think electricity pylons) so as panels become more widespread their acceptance will grow. Secondly, with a steady market housebuilders and architects are likely to compete to develop more visually appealing installations, which again should lead to a rapid increase in innovation and benefit the further acceleration of solar adoption.

The share of UK electricity generated through solar of all types (commercial and large scale included) was 1.25% according to Government figures but it is rising rapidly. Sensible interventions could supercharge the growth.

Climate Change

Ignoring the Elephant

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Over the weekend I wrote a post called The Elephant in the Room where I talked about the tendency of journalists to ignore the issue of climate change when reporting energy stories. As if to prove the point Terry Macalister, the energy editor in this morning’s paper managed to write about Lord Browne’s plans to build a major energy company from scratch (using Russian money) without mentioning the Carbon Bubble. Given the palpable financial risks involved you might argue this is a journalistic failure.

Climate Change

The climate change narrative 

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Winning the “carbon war” will be more about narratives than policy initiatives. That seemed to be the message of Jeremy Leggett, former Green Peace activist, and academic, current chairman of The Carbon Trust and founder of Solar Century, as he spoke to a meeting of the London Futurists.

And key to these narratives are what he says are three mega trends:

  • The plummeting costs of green technologies (called the “terrordome” by analysts AllianceBerstein)
  • The rising costs of fossil fuel extraction – over $700bn in 2014
  • Growing environmental activism around the world (there was a march happening in London at the same time as he was giving his speech)

These are inexorable trends and together they are pushing the world in the right direction ahead of the global climate summit in Paris in November.

There are counter narratives – such as the promise of cheap energy from fracking which is the current obsession of the Prime Minister and Chancellor. But Jeremy Leggett believes there are strong reasons why this fracking revolution isn’t going to happen. First, the U.S. success story is unravelling fast and may implode before the UK general election next May. That would force an abrupt change of line, he believes. Second, the British (and perhaps particularly those in the Tory shires) are pathologically opposed which makes it difficult to envisage, especially in the new era of minority government and coalitions.

The final reason Jeremy Leggett seems a lot more positive than many in the environmental movement is the growing acceptance by the financial community of the sizeable risk of a carbon bubble. Even the Bank of England is now examining the question to assess the systemic risk.

Taken together, he believes these narratives are turning the tide.

He is serialising, for free, a book outlining his arguments which can be downloaded here.

Climate Change

The Elephant in the Room

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It is great to see Alan Rusbridger driving a major push on Climate Change at The Guardian.

Generally the coverage of the issue itself is good on The Guardian. But they suffer from a common problem. When journalists cover energy related subjects – say the trials and tribulations of the North Sea oil industry or fracking or Alberta coal tar sands – they do so in isolation, without mentioning the Elephant in the Room – the carbon budget. This basically means most of even the oil and gas on the energy companies’ books can’t be burned if we are to stay below 2 degrees C of warming. 

That’s not to say The Guardian doesn’t do a good job of reporting on the Elephant itself; it does. It’s just that the Elephant often doesn’t get a look in when other, related topics are covered. 

And, in my opinion, it’s a good idea to keep your eye on the Elephant at all times. 

Alan Rusbridger has said that the one thing he wishes he had done a better job of in his time as editor is cover Climate Change better. Here’s hoping this means the Elephant gets a look in much more in the future. 

Climate Change

The Government’s paradoxical approach to the climate

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This week saw two significant climate change events.

Firstly climate scientists from NASA and NOAA officially confirmed that 2014 was the hottest year on record. Most scientists now believe that the world is on track for warming of 4C or 5C by the end of the century – and nobody knows what sort of a world that will be, except that it is likely to be exceptionally challenging.

Secondly, the Environment Agency gave approval for Cuadrilla permission to resuming test drilling two miles away from the site that caused earthquakes last time they tried. The coalition government is hell bent on promoting fracking in the UK as aggressively as they can – probably keen to emulate the energy revolution which has happened in the US.

But it has become clear that the last thing the world needs is more fossil fuels. If we are keep warming to 2C – a target that world leaders are still ostensibly signed up to – then it is now recognised that a large proportion of extractable fossil fuels will need to be left in the ground. Actually, the figures are 82% of all coal, 49% of all gas and 33% of all oil.

So, if the Prime Minister is genuinely simultaneously signed up for action on climate change and developing fracking it must mean only one thing – he thinks we can boost our fossil fuel production while expecting others to do the heavy lifting. Given the fraught nature of international climate politics, that doesn’t sound like a realistic position.

Climate Change

Invisible Carbon Dioxide

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Two stories in the press today illustrate magnificently the size of the mountain we still have to climb to climate change awareness, let alone decisive action. First the FT writes about the resurgence of interest in coal in the UK by Australian investors, then the Guardian writes about the Labour Party’s commitment to tighten up on the rules around fracking.

Despite the fact that both newspapers regularly report on climate change findings it’s as if the issue didn’t exist as far as these two stories are concerned. As usual neither mentioned the elephant in the room – that developing more sources of carbon may be unwise (not to say insane) when there are already considerable reserves on the energy companies’ books which are unburnable if the 2degC warming limit which world leaders are committed to is going to be remotely achievable.

The decision to invest in either coal or fracking is either bad or mad. Either the world’s leaders do nothing and the investments reap rewards now at the expense of huge disruption later (PDF) or those leaders are shocked into taking practical steps to limit carbon significantly in which case the value of those investments will likely collapse.

Either way, it’s not an investment decision to be proud of.