Together on electric cars
With Gordon Brown jumping on a growing battery-powered bandwagon, are we finally on a green path?
Read MoreBiochar proponents get spammed
George Monbiot wrote about the carbonisation of organic matter in the Guardian last month ('Woodchips with everything. It's the Atkins plan of the low-carbon world', Tuesday 24 March 2009), saying it was yet another miracle cure for the climate problem. And, like previous miracle cures, he said ‘biochar’ would turn out to be a dangerous delusion. It would deflect attention from taking real action on climate change. Parts of the planet would be turned into vast forest plantations with limited biodiversity to provide feedstock for huge factories. Vital food-growing land would be lost to vast corporations farming wood for turning into biochar. It is a re-run of the biofuels disaster, he said.
Read MoreAmerican public opinion
Gallup reports a steep rise in the number of Americans thinking that climate change is exaggerated. Well, that’s how the US newspapers reported the results. A look at the detailed polling responses gives a slightly different view. The change more reflects a decline in the perceived accuracy of news reporting rather than a substantial swing in attitudes towards the threat from global warming.
Read MoreKingsnorth: why does E.ON want to build a new coal plant without CCS?
E.ON’s £1bn plan for a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth is waiting for approval from the UK government. Other generators have shifted away from coal. Drax, which owns by far the largest coal power station in the UK, is investing in biomass. Other companies have focused on new gas plants. Why is the world’s largest investor-owned utility pushing ahead with a project to burn coal without carbon capture? The answer, unsurprisingly, is that burning coal to generate electricity is extremely profitable. Very low prices for emissions permits and tumbling coal costs mean that a profit-seeking management team is highly incentivised to try to push for permission to use coal in power stations. This article provides the background calculations for an estimate that the new Kingsnorth will generate an operating profit of about £300m a year if current fuel and carbon prices persist. Additionally, it also tries to show that the cost of fitting CCS equipment and running the plant to capture the large majority of all carbon emissions is likely to add no more than about 1.5p per kilowatt hour to the cost of generating electricity at current coal and carbon prices. This means that a new coal fired power station *with CCS* may have operating costs only marginally above gas power plants
Nevertheless, E.ON has just asked for government subsidy to install CCS at Kingsnorth from day one. The purpose of this article is to offer an estimate of the maximum the government ought to offer E.ON in order to get it to invest in CCS prior to opening the new power station.
Read MoreRepublic of Maldives: a plan for carbon neutrality
The Maldives will be the first country to be overwhelmed by the effect of climate change. The republic is a collection of coral atolls with maximum heights of one or two metres above sea level. Climate change is increasing worldwide sea levels and the atolls will probably go underwater by the end of the century. The 300,000-400,000 people who live on the Maldives are not responsible for global warming. Their emissions per head (even including aviation fuels for incoming international tourism) are less than a seventh of typical European levels.
Many countries have set ambitious targets for the reduction of carbon emissions. The government of the Maldives seeks to encourage this trend by going one step further with a plan for near carbon neutrality within ten years.
This is an immensely challenging target. Chris Goodall (author of this blog) and Mark Lynas, the prize-winning climate change author, were asked to provide a short outline of how it might be achieved and what it might cost.
In the rest of this note, we show our calculations. We will be the first to acknowledge that this work is incomplete. Although it was tempting to conduct fieldwork in some of the most attractive island resorts, we did our analysis using publicly available information and with help from officials attached to the Maldives government.
Our work shows that near neutrality is possible, but expensive. It will take at least $1.1bn for this small island state. The Maldives imports almost all its fuels in the form of refined oil products. Rates of financial return to the investment therefore depend largely on the price of oil. If expectations of future oil prices exceed $100 a barrel, we judge that the plan is sufficiently attractive to be financeable by international institutions such as the World Bank.
Comments on this work will be very gratefully received.
Read MorePower Station 571 needs to be paid
People like me who buy solar panels tend to become unreasonably fond of them. Many homeowners come to regard these silent blocks of silicon on our roofs as part of the family. I’m also particularly proud that our panels are registered at Ofgem, the utilities regulator, as Power Station 571. The reason for going through the cumbersome process to convince Ofgem that my silicon should be listed alongside Drax and Sizewell B was to benefit from the government incentive scheme for renewable electricity generation.
Read MoreWhy do global land use patterns matter so much?
George Monbiot rightly observes that the earth's resources of biomass are limited and cannot be simultaneously claimed for multiple uses: liquid biofuels, fuel for heating, biogas, and biochar. This presentation looks at the globe's land and biomass production to assess how much space can be given over to non-food uses and how much energy this can generate. This is one of the crucial questions facing the world: how much energy can we use from biomass before this affects the ability of the world to provide enough food for nearly 7bn people, rising to at least 9bn by 2050?
Read MoreWhat has posterity done for us?
Most governments in the developed world were elected on platforms that included promises to pursue aggressive policies on greenhouse gas emissions. Broadly speaking, the reality has not matched the promises made. The reasons for this are multitudinous and no one should ever underestimate the difficulties of weaning advanced societies off the use of cheap and convenient access to fossil fuels. But in addition to the standard reasons for slow progress we can see a large number of obstacles that spring from human psychology. In particular, some of the resistance to aggressive action on climate seems to spring from mental attitudes that may have helped us survive as a species in the past. Politicians may intuitively recognise the existence of these barriers. So they continue to say that climate change is the most important problem facing humanity at the same time as adding new runways to the local airport or sanctioning the development of new coal-fired power stations.
Read MoreWhy might nuclear be necessary?
In the Independent newspaper (London, Monday 23 February) I argued that we may need to accept some new nuclear power stations. I put forward the view that the trench warfare between the pro-nuclear groups and those that support renewables means that progress towards 'decarbonising' electricity generation in the UK is too slow. We probably need to invest in many different types of non fossil-fuel generation as rapidly as we can if we are to meet the tough targets for UK emissions reduction so painfully won by groups such as Friends of the Earth. We no longer have the luxury of ruling out nuclear expansion.
Read MoreGlobal temperatures for January
No climate data is without its critics. We do not have the equipment to measure the temperature in every square kilometre of the world’s surface so we cannot be sure that global ‘averages’ are correct. Disputes about the reliability of climate data will continue. But the US Government’s National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) is one of the world’s most authoritative sources of global data.
Read MoreA time to resurrect Prudence?
The Climate Change Committee (CCC) wrote in its December report that the world could expect about a 2 degree rise in temperature by 2100 if global emissions fell by about 50% by mid-century. It said that the risk of more than a 4 degrees rise is less than 1% if the world achieved this reduction. Because the UK has per capita emissions much higher than the global average, the Committee recommended that the country should cut its emissions by about 80%. This would eventually leave the UK’s emissions per head as about the same as the rest of the world. The CCC report is thorough, robust and clear. But is its recommendation sufficiently prudent? In four main respects, the Committee has chosen a more optimistic conclusion than I believe is warranted. The implication is that its emissions reductions targets are not severe enough.
Read MoreTory smart thinking could be short-circuited by party's past
The Conservatives do not explain how 'smart meters' would work, how the 'electricity internet' would be funded or how a voluntary scheme can be a success.
Read MoreAt last, some good sense on Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS)
A powerful US coalition of large industrial companies, power producers, and environmental defence organisations has produced the first sensible plan for incentivising the early introduction of carbon capture at solid fuel electricity plants. The scheme proposed by the US Climate Action Partnership (USCAP) addresses the most important environmental issue in the world – the burning of coal to generate electricity – in a plausible and coherent way. Coal, which is almost exclusively burnt in power stations or in steel-making, is responsible for about 36% of US emissions. If we can find a way of cheaply capturing the CO2 from power stations and storing it underground, we can then also provide the technology to Chinese and Indian generators.
Read MoreGreen jobs: time to look at the benefits of growing and using more wood
Government officials are searching for policies that will meet the twin aims of providing jobs and meeting the UK’s climate change targets. It is proving a difficult task. The easiest ways of reducing fossil fuel use will probably not create many new jobs in the UK. All large wind turbines are built abroad and although the construction work on a nuclear power station will generate a few thousand jobs, most of the key components will need to come from Europe and Japan. So where are the opportunities? I think two major areas stand out as excellent ways of generating jobs quickly without also dragging in expensive imports or sharply raising prices.
Read MoreThe fall in the pound's value undermines any financial case for nuclear energy
The UK government’s enthusiasm for the construction of nuclear power stations is based on a May 2007 consultation document published by the Department of Trade and Industry (now BERR). This paper argued that nuclear offered a financially viable way of generating electricity, broadly competitive with fossil fuels. It correctly pointed out that the cost of nuclear energy is largely determined by how much a plant costs to build, not by uranium prices or by the price of disposing of nuclear waste.
Read MoreDoes an economic depression mean slower progress towards green objectives?
We didn’t make much progress reducing emissions when times were good. Will the looming depression makes things worse or better? The discussion of this issue, at least in the UK, tends to be superficial. The only question asked seems to be ‘will people buy less eco-bling when times are hard?’
Read MoreFormula 1 should ditch the internal combustion engine
Honda’s withdrawal from the hugely expensive world of Formula 1 motor racing is another illustration of the pressures on the world’s car-makers. Now might be a good time for reflection. Does it make sense to use the petrol engine as the power source for the cars on the track. Isn’t it time to switch to electric cars?
Read MoreWhy is the UK so far behind in renewables?
Most major countries in Europe have decided to focus on one or two technologies to reduce carbon emissions. By making concentrated investments in one or two promising areas these countries are likely to achieve substantial cost reductions and rapid increases in deployment. By contrast, the UK is dabbling ineffectually in several areas and achieving little. Despite having large resources of renewable energy sources, the UK’s effort is diffuse, trivial in scope and clearly insufficient. We have almost the lowest percentage of our energy coming from low-carbon sources in the EU.
Read MoreThe Pentland Firth
The funnel of water between the north-east tip of Scotland and the Orkney Islands contains some of the most powerful tidal energy in the world. The exploitable resource at the time of the fastest running tides may be as much 8 gigawatts. One source I have talked to suggests the figure could even be as high as 20 gigawatts. As I write this note, the National Grid’s website gives an estimate of the electricity use at this moment – about 55 gigawatts at peak-time on a winter evening. Be in no doubt, the Pentland Firth is the single most important source of renewable energy in the UK. The power concentrated in this narrow stretch of water could comfortably provide London’s electricity need. And it is entirely predictable to within a few percent every minute of every day. The tidal power will peak twice every 24 hours in a cycle that the Grid will be able to plan for decades in advance.
Read MoreJatropha
Alok Jha of the Guardian wrote about Air New Zealand’s trial of jet fuel based on jatropha berries. This note looks at the percentage of the world’s land area that would have to be devoted to the crop in order to provide for the total needs of aviation, an industry that uses about 5% of the world’s oil.
Read More