The UK government announcement on incentives for small scale renewables has three unexpected features:
- The payments for renewable heat, such as the home burning of wood to replace gas or rooftop solar hot water, are much higher than predicted.
- The figures for wind have risen since the autumn consultation document. This means that well-located wind turbines of the 6-15 kW size are likely to produce returns above 13% per year.
- The payments for solar PV have been increased slightly, but do not offer returns as good as wind. Importantly, the government has also signalled that it will allow PV installed at any time over the next 28 months to capture the full feed-in tariff. Previously, the tariff declined for installations made after March 2011.
An earlier article on this topic which looks in more detail on the incentives to take up the new ‘feed-in tariffs’ is here.
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Tags: carbon reduction initiatives, domestic, housing, politics, power generation, renewables
The UK is one of the least forested countries in Europe. Although the amount of woodland cover has increased substantially since its nadir after the First World War, growth has slackened in recent years. The growing maturity of UK woodlands means that carbon sequestration is falling rapidly. An independent assessment commissioned by the Forestry Commission has proposed one way forward: a million new hectares devoted to woodland, generating a reduction of up to 15% of the UK emissions in 2050.
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Tags: biomass, carbon reduction initiatives, Climate Change Committee, electricity, forestry, Forestry Commission, UK
The previous post on this web site analysed a recent DFID press release on malaria and climate change.
I’ve been sent three recent papers by scientists in Kenya dealing with the epidemiology of malaria. Links to two of these articles are provided below. These documents show that the DFID assertion that malaria is increasing in highland regions of Kenya is highly questionable and that overall malaria rates are probably decreasing, although the geographic picture is complex. They also demonstrate that rates of infection respond to simple but well-targeted interventions. Eradicating malaria from Africa is a difficult target but not one without hope of success.
Climate change doesn’t make getting rid of malaria any easier. But blaming rising temperatures for high infection rates is carelessly avoiding the real issues: poor public health provision in some parts of Africa, land use change and inadequate availability or use of insecticide treated nets.
Tags: climate change, Kenya, malaria, science
The malaria life cycle. Source: University of Tuebingen.
A recent press release from the UK Department for International Development (DFID) suggested that millions more people in Kenya are susceptible to malaria as a result of mosquitoes colonising higher ground as global temperatures rise. (‘New evidence of a link between climate change and malaria’, 30.12.09 – see below). The press release was extensively covered in UK newspapers and elsewhere.
Simple analysis shows that the claims of the press release are almost entirely without foundation. The battle against the severe threat from climate change is impeded, not helped, by government departments issuing alarmist and exaggerated alerts based on poor science.
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Tags: climate change, IPCC, Kenya, malaria, politics, science
Call or write to Black & Decker to demand that the company launches its Thermal Leak Detector in Europe and elsewhere. This is the single most useful energy saving device I have ever seen. Europeans can buy it from Amazon.com in the States, but shipping and customs charges make it quite expensive. Let’s get it here before the winter ends.
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Tags: Black & Decker, domestic, energy saving gadgets, home insulation, technology
A previous article covered the remarkable growth of Spanish wind and the success in incorporating this electricity into Spain’s grid. It focused on the periods in November when wind provided much of the country’s electricity, peaking at almost 54% in the early morning of 8 November 2009. Wind was almost 23% of the Spanish total electricity production during the month of November, beating nuclear for the first time. Solar also grew rapidly in 2009, up from 1% in 2008 to 3% of national output.
The effect on CO2 emissions from power generation was striking. Carbon dioxide output fell by over a sixth, largely as a result of the growth in renewables.
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Tags: CO2 emissions from electricity generation, power generation, REE, renewables, solar, Spain, UNESA, wind power
UK supermarkets and DIY chains stock up to twenty different types of energy-efficient light bulbs but most households have some light fittings that cannot use any of these bulbs. There are several hundred different combinations of fitting, shape, and power. Some internet sites, such as www.lightbulbs-direct.com/article/energy-saving or www.gogreenlights.co.uk offer a very wide range of low-energy-use bulbs including many unusual types you cannot find in shops. One problem remains: it is not always possible to tell whether the bulb you see on a webpage will actually fit your lamp holder or whether it will be the correct brightness. Light-bulb Libaries may be the answer.
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Tags: carbon reduction initiatives, domestic, energy efficiency, Philips
We don’t have direct CO2 records earlier than 800,000 years ago. So scientists use what are called ‘proxies’ – indicators that give us indirect estimates of the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Advances in scientific techniques have given us increasingly good proxies, meaning we can be more confident that our estimates of CO2 levels hundreds of millions of years ago are about right. There are anomalies: the various different proxies don’t always provide similar results. A paper published this week goes a long way to removing one important anomaly.[1] It shows that the proxy that uses estimates of CO2 concentrations based on isotope levels in ancient soil carbonates may have over-recorded atmospheric carbon dioxide levels at some periods. This brings the figures into line with other measures.
Why does this matter? In Mesozoic times, from about 250 to 80 million years ago, the soil carbonate proxy has previously suggested very high CO2 levels in the atmosphere. Some studies had concluded that the air had several thousand parts per million of carbon dioxide, peaking perhaps at fifteen times higher levels than today. But records suggest that the temperature was only a maximum of 10 degrees Celsius higher than today. If the standard ‘carbon cycle’ models are correct, the estimated CO2 concentrations ought to have produced warmer conditions. The importance of this new research is that it shows that adjusted soil carbon proxies indicate that Mesozoic CO2 concentrations probably never rose above 1,500 parts per million, a figure consistent with other proxies and with the probable temperature levels at time. This is one more important indication that ancient CO2 levels were strongly correlated with climate.
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Tags: science
Richard Black, the BBC’s online environment correspondent, attracted attention when he noticed that almost all climate sceptics are men. Instead, he might have chosen to comment that many of them were social scientists with leanings towards economics. Coincidentally, economics is populated by males. It is only this year that the first woman won the subject’s Nobel prize, and her work would not be regarded as part of the subject by many academic purists. Sceptics Nigel Lawson, Steven Levitt, Bjørn Lomborg, and others all think about the world as economists. That’s probably more important than that they are male.
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Tags: Bjørn Lomborg, econists, Nigel Lawson, Richard Black, sceptics, science, Steven Levitt, Tim Jackson
Image source: Hemmy.net.
The Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed has become the most visible developing country spokesperson on climate change. Nasheed has continued to press for radical reductions in CO2 levels in the atmosphere, most recently arguing for a 350 parts per million target in a meeting with activist and author Bill McKibben in Copenhagen.
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Tags: climate change, Copenhagen, Mark Lynas, politics, renewables, The Maldives
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