Household batteries
Inventions that take the breath away with their simplicity and elegance are rare. The new rechargeable batteries from USBCell qualify for this honour. As their name indicates, they are AA batteries that are recharged by the USB port on a laptop or other powered device. They are not cheap, but will repay the investment by being far easier to recharge than conventional rechargeable AAs.
The carbon savings from these batteries are not large. My calculation is that they might save 10kg of CO2 a year in a household full of portable devices. But they will, of course, reduce the waste going into landfill.
The company that makes the batteries has won some important awards for its innovation. More importantly, it also has some extremely interesting views on the evolution of home electricity demand. It correctly points out that a larger and larger fraction of home energy is used in 12V, not 240V appliances. We waste a lot of energy switching 240V AC down to 12V DC. Its next products include a box that will allow all DC devices (phones, handheld consoles, laptops) to be efficiently charged. Eventually, it will be possible to use cheap(-ish) solar power collectors to charge all the battery DC devices in the home. The savings in carbon would be worthwhile (but probably outweighed by the purchase of one extra TV).
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The Conservative Party published a policy paper in early December on decentralised production of energy. It argues for heavy subsidy for small-scale generation of electricity. The report is useful in focusing on the need to minimise the finance and administrative burdens on small generators. However, it omits any consideration of the costs of the scheme it proposes. It is woefully ill-informed about developments in other countries. The Conservatives have subscribed to a romantic view about micro-generation and are choosing to ignore the huge costs of subsidising inefficient local generators. If they want large-scale low-carbon generation they should either back nuclear, remove the planning problems with wind, subsidise tidal or biomass power, or invest in CO2 capture.
The CBI brought out a report on climate change. It argues that the UK can achieve emissions reductions at a sufficiently rapid rate to meet the government’s old target of 60% cuts by 2050. The optimism is underpinned by McKinsey work that assesses 120 different options for reducing carbon dioxide, ranging from domestic solar panels to carbon capture. McKinsey assesses what carbon price is necessary to create the incentives for business and consumers to switch to using these technologies.
The McKinsey analysis appears to show that getting the UK on track will need carbon prices in excess of €90 by 2020, though this number will then fall.
The world understands ‘smart metering’ in many different ways. Gordon Brown used the expression in his first speech on climate change. He meant devices that give visual real-time indication of electricity consumption, largely in homes. To the UK Conservative Party (see 
The IPCC released a 23-page report summarising the work of the fourth phase. Newspaper headlines suggested the document was more apocalyptic than the third summary of 2001. The reality is more complex.
The government announced that it was minded to allow Heathrow to expand. A new runway and sixth terminal will increase capacity from 480,000 to 702,000 flights. The government’s consultation documents – totalling hundreds of pages – did not provide an estimate of the impact on CO2 emissions. In this article, we offer a tentative figure of about 16m tonnes as the potential maximum impact of the proposed expansion. After multiplying by 2.7 to account for the other pollutants created by aviation, the increase takes the total UK emissions from aviation up to 144m tonnes of CO2 equivalent.
The environmental community tends to think that Gordon Brown doesn’t understand the complexity and size of the climate challenge. His first speech on the subject gave more detail than expected and reassured some that the prime minister does recognise the severity of the challenge. He moved towards an 80% reduction in GHGs by 2050, but even under optimistic assumptions his plans will not result in emissions reductions on the scale required. All his proposals were pain-free. He does not yet believe that the electorate is ready to face the real challenges of emissions reduction.
In Denmark and Germany, large numbers of individuals own shares in local wind farms. If the government encouraged this in the UK, a large part of the local opposition would disappear. Onshore wind farms in windy locations are good investments which could form an effective part of many people’s pension plans.
One of the few co-operatively owned wind farms in the country has almost finished raising its funds. Investors have put up £3m to buy two existing turbines in the Fens. Locally owned wind farms should be encouraged as a cost effective means of cutting emissions.
After decades of foot-dragging, the UK construction industry has begun to see the importance of good insulation and higher environmental performance. Large housebuilders are beginning voluntarily to build their major developments to a better standard than required by building regulations.
Amazon’s new e-reader has been widely discussed this week. Most of the comments have been unflattering. Critics have gasped at the high price ($400) and commented unfavourably on the slightly dated appearance of the device. Others asked why Amazon thought it could charge for newspapers and blogs that are available free via a computer.
Shai Agassi, the California-based software superstar who wanted to run SAP but left the company in March when he didn’t get the top job, has come back into the spotlight as the CEO of an electric car start-up. The new company is funded by $200m of venture capital and investment bank money. This makes it one of the best-funded start-ups in history.
Agassi does not intend to make electric cars. Wisely, he is leaving this to the auto industry. He is focusing on the batteries. He’ll lease them to anybody with an appropriate car and he’ll develop large networks of ‘filling stations’ where the driver can quickly take out a discharged battery and swap it for a fully charged version on long journeys. By 2010, he wants a hundred thousands electric cars on the roads of California and elsewhere.
The US presidential contenders are laying out their plans for climate change mitigation and adaptation. Mrs Clinton’s proposals are noteworthy for their commitment to re-engage with the global negotiations over future emissions caps and for her ambitious acceptance of the need for an 80% reduction in US emissions by 2050. The 80% target is rapidly becoming the preferred option of world politicians, a more ambitious target than the UK’s 60% figure. (The UK’s Climate Change bill will allow the new Climate Change Committee to recommend an increase to 80% if appropriate.)
Mrs Clinton espouses a cap-and-trade system for US emissions. Unlike the EU’s approach, she proposes to auction the permits. She will continue the disastrous US policy of encouraging the conversion of corn to bioethanol. She looks to renewable electricity to provide 25% of US power.
Two pieces of market research published in the last week give some more support for the view that opinion is moving towards accepting that climate change will require lifestyle changes. BBC World Service interviewed individuals across the globe. Power company E.ON produced its segmentation of British consumer attitudes.
The BBC survey suggested that over 80% of UK people are ‘ready to make significant changes in the way I live to help prevent global warming’. Nearly 90% think that changes in lifestyle will be necessary to address the problem. These numbers are approximately the same as among urban Chinese and only marginally higher than the US.
Energy efficiency improvements often do not deliver reductions in energy use. For example, when a householder installs better insulation, the energy savings are sometimes much less than would have been predicted. Sometimes this is because the insulation was badly fitted, but it is often because the householder runs the heating at a higher temperature when the house is better insulated. This is called the ‘rebound’ effect: when it becomes cheaper or more effective to use energy, people use more of it.
The many studies into this effect have produced a wide variety of different estimates for the size of this effect. Most cluster between 10 and 30%. This means that energy efficiency improvements generally result in a large net benefit. But these studies only capture the direct effect on consumers and businesses. A study from the UK’s Energy Research Centre shows that the economy-wide impact may be much larger. For example, lower heating bills may mean that householders are rich enough to take more flights. At an even higher level of abstraction, better economy-wide energy efficiency (through, say, improvements in steel-making technologies) may encourage more rapid economic growth, which in turn raises energy use.
Organic matter, such as agricultural waste, heated in the absence of oxygen splits into two types of material: a charcoal (biochar), and hydrocarbon gases and liquids. When added to soils, the charcoal can provide a powerful fertiliser. The hydrocarbons can be burnt, either to generate electricity or to power an internal combustion engine.
Biochar is exciting growing attention around the world. Charcoal’s ability to improve soils can sometimes be spectacular. But more importantly from a climate change perspective, charcoal is almost pure carbon and is strangely stable in soils. It seems to persist for centuries. Charcoal can therefore offer substantial opportunities for long-term sequestration of carbon. The valuable fuels from the biogases and liquids are also carbon-neutral since they contain CO2 previously captured during photosynthesis. As a third major benefit, soils fertilised with charcoal seem to need less artificial fertiliser, thus saving fossil fuels. Fewer applications of fertiliser would reduce the level of emissions of nitrous oxide, a particularly dangerous greenhouse gas.
Post-industrial countries like the UK import an increasing fraction of their manufactured goods from China. The carbon emissions from the Chinese factories making these goods are not included in the UK’s totals. How much greater would the UK’s emissions be if we included the impact of goods manufactured in China?
The Goodall household is well-trained. Compostable products get put on the compost heap. Plastic bottles end up in the recycling bin. Where should Innocent’s new smoothie bottles made from bio-degradable corn starch go? Surprisingly, the answer is into landfill.
Innocent, the company with one of the purest brands in the UK, has made a mistake. For the last year it has used a new material called PLA for one of its ranges of drinks. It admitted last week that it would cease to use this bio-plastic later this year. But on its website it was still making some surprising claims. It says that the bottles made from this bio-plastic break down in garden compost heaps. They will not. PLA needs to be heated for several days to temperatures far greater than those in a domestic compost bin before it begins to rot. The bottles would break down in a commercial composter, but very few local authorities operate one of these plants. Innocent’s ethical consumers are going to find a large number of plastic bottles at the bottom of their compost heap next spring.
The Peak Oil question is beginning to become a central part of the daily debate on energy matters. On one side is an increasing number of independent scientists and oil engineers who note that world oil production is barely rising. Existing fields are running down and new reserves are found rarely. On the other side of the debate are the major institutions of the global oil industry. The International Energy Agency sees world oil supply rising from about 88 million barrels a day now to about 116 million barrels in 2030.
Video conferencing has been around for a surprisingly long time. AT&T ran the first call in 1927. Since then, pundits have been consistently predicting that video conferencing was just about to take off. They have been wrong for eighty years. Why should we believe the techno-optimists now?
A recent Henley Centre survey suggested that 86% of people were eager to buy goods with less packaging, up 20% in the last two years. Nothing arouses as much spontaneous anger among British householders as the ‘over-packaging’ of foods. Recent newspaper headlines conveyed righteous indignation about the policies of UK retailers, in particular the failure to make all packaging recyclable.
The newspapers completely missed the point. Three issues need to be emphasised: