A Green Degree

This blog intends to bring a new perspective on all things 'green' and sustainable, covering (mostly) energy, politics, the economy & more, what I feel as the most pressing concerns we face. In short, sustainability needs to progress & become the social everyday. That's my passion, and our solution. Screw business as usual people!













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December 6th 2012

George Osborne Shows Us He’s Ready To Do Just As We Expected: Create Yet More Hot Air

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George Osborne today finally made crystal clear exactly what he thinks of the green agenda and renewable energy economy - that unless he gets smacked round the head by a spinning wind turbine, which lets face it, may do some good to his outrageously deluded mind, he won’t give it the time of day, or night, or anything inbetween. It’s all about the gas my friends.

With his Autumn Statement came many expectations from the climate and energy hawks amongst us, and it’s pretty safe to say that effectively all of them came to fruition as he stood defiant and commanding at the microphone, with an air which seemed to suggest he knows what he’s doing, and what he’s doing is in the best interest of us all. May have to think again on that one George.

It’s no secret that Mr Osborne and fellow energy minister Ed Davey generally sit at either end of the scale when it comes to the future of renewable energy and a low-carbon economy in this country, with the Treasury becoming increasingly characterised as the evil, gas-guzzling, fund-slashing body that it pretty much is. All the while, Davey is effectively fighting an uphill battle on every aspect of energy policy within the coalition, and despite having what should be powerful and influential bodies backing him, such as DECC, BIS and the CBI, he is being consistently shortchanged.

I will admit just quickly however that what Davey managed to achieve with the Energy Bill announced just last week was most probably the very best he could have gotten out of such a confused and lost government, and in many ways there’s plenty to praise about it. Contracts for difference and a multi-billion pound fund set for low-carbon projects and the development of a single counter-party setting the price alongside a capacity mechanism which could work means there’s plenty of good things going renewable’s way.

There was of course a huge omission in the delaying of the decarbonisation target decision until 2016, and the idea of excluding carbon-intensive industry just boggles the mind, but considering what Davey was actually up against, I find it hard not to applaud him. When you’ve got people like John Hayes and George Osborne throwing their weight and silly statistics around it’s damn surprising he got anything done at all.

So it must be a real kick in the teeth, groin and all other areas to Davey to hear what the Chancellor has planned for the UK energy market over the coming years, whilst he fights even harder to produce the goods over in Doha. Undoubtedly he knew some, if not all aspects of the announcement today, but that can’t make it any easier.

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Posted at 10:00am and tagged with: osborne, treasury, gas, shale, fracking, AS2012, money, energy, davey, government, news, politics, climate, carbon, UK, renewables, low-carbon, coal, wind, data, science, education,.

November 29th 2012

The Beginning Of The British Nuclear Renaissance?

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http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/energy/9642199/Hitachis-700m-Horizon-nuclear-deal-to-create-up-to-12000-British-jobs.html

Call me optimistic, and trust me, that’s not what I’m often called, but to me it’s starting to look like nuclear may finally be back on the radar for the UK, at least in the form of tentative steps towards kickstarting once-ailing projects and renewing ageing others. There may even be some hope lingering in the recently announced Energy Bill, of which there are unfortunately many negative aspects covering some surprisingly positive ones for the industry and it’s future in terms of project certainty and subsidies.

The acquisition of the infamous Horizon nuclear site has undoubtedly proved as the catalyst for this, and has been the butt of many coalition-directed jokes for some time now, after E.ON and RWE put the project up for sale in March following that fateful nuclear-backlash from Fukushima (brief thoughts on that coming later). Many thought it signalled the gradual and undignified death of the industry at the hands of public outcry and atrocious safety hazards, and I included believed it highly unlikely to be seeing any new reactors planned for some decades to come, if at all. Fortunately, it seems our overseas Asian friends think otherwise.

Hitachi recently completed the sale of Horizon at £700million and plans to begin construction of two to three plants at each of the two sites, and more importantly is planning on implementing cutting-edge technology in an attempt to reduce costs and build times, as well as to placate those who feel nuclear is dirty, dangerous and likely to kill us all one day. These AWBRs, or Advanced Water Boiling Reactors are apparently the ‘only advanced nuclear reactors licensed and in production around the world, and have been built on time and within cost’, unlike pretty much any other European reactor currently being constructed. 

They intend the plants to produce 1.3GW of electricity each, and to create over 12,000 jobs in the process, yet again boosting one of the only sectors to truly be growing in this current climate, the green and low-carbon economy. With this much extra juice and investment flowing into our ‘green and pleasant lands’ without the added worry of carbon emissions during use, a rather large hole which would have inevitably formed as old plants were shut down can hopefully be plugged. 

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Posted at 10:00am and tagged with: nuclear, hinkley, horizon, somerset, project, energy, climate, fossil fuels, oil, gas, death, explosion, fukushima, 3-mile island, chernobyl, energy bill, EDF,.

October 31st 2012

Reconciling China & The US Over Climate Change, Impossible? Just Improbable

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As part of my seminar work at university recently, we were tasked with acting out a mock debate between China and the United States, as though we were their respective leaders attempting to form an international agreement on climate change and emissions, all COP-like. Three of us were labelled China (me) and the other three the US, and for two weeks we prepared our sides of the argument with the ideas of fairness, equality and discussing topics which are rarely touched upon in the real world. 

Now, our goal was to duke it out for 20 minutes or so, each bringing out our biggest guns on the topics of economy, climate policy, energy and poverty, with the ultimate goal of first debating who bore the better position on the global stage, before forming a bilateral framework to bring the rest of the world on board. Easy task eh! But fun nonetheless.

Our lecturer, an environmental barrister who has seen his fair share of global conventions and knows how they work and (mostly) don’t work, and was keen that we focus on one or two key attributes of a fair debate on this topic. Firstly, historical emissions, the idea that a figure can be derived to demonstrate how much greenhouse gas emissions had been accumulated over time by each industrialising country, generally from 1850 until the present. Secondly, the intent to damage, or mens rea, and associated legal issues such as liability were to be included, as these are generally ignored or swept under the rug in the conventions we’ve come to know and hate.

And who do you think holds the crown of the highest historical emissions between the US and China? Why the US of course, by a margin of about 220,000Gt of CO2, maxing out at ~340,000Gt, almost 30% of the entire worldwide past emissions accounted for. China on the other hand is responsible for around 9% of the share, and much of that has been in the last 30-40 years of rampant coal consumption and becoming the ‘manufacturer of the world’, a moniker the US has had much use out of. When you consider what we know of climate science and carbon dioxide today, that fantastically large proportion of emissions resulting from the States puts pretty much everything else into perspective, not least China’s emissions.

China has tried to use this against the US before, claiming that they should pay up for all the dirty CO2 and the years of unabated, joyful economic growth it brought with it; if China is to be expected to slow growth to mitigate climate change, then the US should compensate all those who have and will be affected by that 30% historical share, i.e. the entire planet. When they brought this demand to the table, the US used their secret weapon to shoot it down instantaneously, quickly brushing it out of sight before anything serious came of it. By claiming ignorance effectively, the US leaders merely stated that they could not have possibly known fossil fuel burning was damaging the environment as we now know, and to ask them to pay compensation for anything earlier than, say, the 1980s would be ludicrous. This is despite the fact that we as a society knew these emissions were damaging at least decades earlier, and certainly by the early 1970s, when the wider scientific community began studying the effects of carbon dioxide and other pollutants. 

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Posted at 10:01am and tagged with: us, china, energy, climate, COP, debate, money, global, climate change, science,.

October 25th 2012

Somehow, UK Leads (Mostly) Europe-Wide Overachievement Towards Kyoto Targets

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Well I must admit, I for one did not see this news coming, and it has come at quite the shock to me, and I would like to think much of the developed world and climate hawks all around. The EU is set to meet and surpass the greenhouse gas emission targets set out in the Kyoto Protocol way back in 1997, cutting overall amounts by at least 5% per country involved, which is a sizeable amount whichever way you cut it.

Considering many other developed nations have either long given up on reaching these goals, or have simply backed out in the interests of domestic markets (think Canada and their precious tar-sand resources), or never actually ratified the Protocol in the first place, the fact that the EU has achieved this is quite some show of progress in the right direction.

What surprised me even more so, and this is undoubtedly where my powerful cynicism comes into play, or what I like to think of as realistic cynicism at least, is that the United Kingdom is leading the pack in slashing GHG emissions in real terms (actual tonnes of emissions), cutting them by 6% in 2011, equivalent to roughly 36m tonnes of CO2. Compare this to 5% for France and just 2% for solar-rich Germany, and you see what all the fuss is about. Personally, and I don’t believe I was alone in this thought, I always mostly ignored the government’s claims of how well we were doing and how we would easily meet our targets and surpass them, and given recent developments in our energy policy, I would be mad to think of it as truth; but apparently I was wrong.

Now, there are multiple reasons as to why this sudden drop in emissions came to be, and when combined, they would seem to account for much of the cuts we are now seeing and inevitably will be boasting about on the global stage. Firstly, a milder year for weather all round depressed gas and electricity usage, and secondly, cleaner wind and solar energy has steadily been coming online since the mid-noughties, and even though there are relatively few numbers of MWs being produced via renewables, they obviously have a impact. 

However, and possibly more importantly, a practically stagnant European economy drove down the use of any form of energy, be it fossil or renewable, in part forcing the decline in emissions, and in others the maddeningly new high bill costs supposedly ‘needed’ to keep the Big Six running our country’s supply of juice. 

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Posted at 10:00am and tagged with: energy, climate, emissions, EU, europe, UK, kyoto protocol, cut, carbon, pollution, canada, china, us, germany, france, nuclear, solar, wind, greenhouse, government, politics, economy, growth, investment, osborne, hayes, cameron, policy,.

September 9th 2012

Shell Gets The Arctic Green Light & Melting Ice Paves The Way For Offshore Madness

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What a summer we’ve had eh, not just here in the UK where it was terrible, but globally; a season where weather went mad and Arctic ice caps took a long-awaited vacation from their comfy ocean abodes, whisked into the atmosphere by a warming world and natural craziness that literally none of us saw coming. Considering the summer isn’t actually even over yet, the impact of these factors is made all the more potent, and is much of the reason for such fervour in the media over drought, floods and food prices. What next?

Well for one thing, more ignorant foolishness is on the horizon, in the form of offshore drilling, perhaps the most lucrative and most idiotic fossil fuel resource we [apparently] have easy access to. Whose leading the revolution at sea? Why Shell of course, with backing by the American Interior and Obama’s government. 

As we all have undoubtedly heard via the blaring sirens of the news outlets and internet aggregators, summer Arctic ice hit some pretty fancy milestones last month; let’s go over them quickly to put this post into context. 

The level of melt reached its peak last August, on the 26th, falling to levels not seen for 30 years of recording, and a full 3-4 weeks before the usual point at which summer temperatures drive the highest reductions in ice, around mid-September. Not only was this melt way off the charts in terms of rapidity and severity, but it has now been touted as a rate so ‘amazing’ that it is considered by Dr Hansen, the famed climate scientist, to be unprecedented in scale in at least as much as 1,500 years, let alone 30, and that we as polluters should be trembling in our boots. 

Carrying on with this theme, Hansen recently released a video detailing data for Northern Hemisphere average temperatures, where he compares 1951-1980 ranges to 2000-2011 records, and there’s an obvious contrast. The most common peak temperatures are a whole standard deviation away from the 1951-1980 means, and altogether the data shows deviations of up to 5 towards warmer temperatures, effectively stating that as we’ve progressed as a society, the past decade has seen more N Hemisphere warming than the whole 30 year period studied prior. It’s not a huge leap of logic to see that these massively pumped up temperatures, only set to increase, are likely responsible for most, if not all of the accelerated ice-melt being experienced in the Arctic.

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Posted at 9:19am and tagged with: oil, drilling, exploration, offshore, oil rig, Shell, BP, tar, disaster, money, politics, science, arctic, ice, melting, record, warming, temperature, climate, global, wind, energy, independence, obama, EPA, US, summer, Hansen, government, election,.

August 28th 2012

We’ve Got The Wrong Idea Of Nuclear; It’s One Of The Good Guys

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I have always been an advocate of nuclear energy, both of the potential behind the fissioning of uranium atoms and the possibilities of replacing fossil fuel generation with a mixture of this and renewables. Despite the seemingly final drawing of the curtain on nuclear and the industry, the ‘multiple disasters’ and the almost complete shunning of it in much of the public’s eye, I’ve kept to my original path and not wavered from the idea.

My reasons for this continued attraction? It’s a combination of many things, including those two mentioned in the opening sentence, alongside factors such as what I perceive as a hugely over-exaggerated waste issue, poor economic and political structure leading to the demise of nuclear which could be rectified, and a simple but strong belief that it could be a big solution to the biggest of our problems, climate change and energy security.

It was with glee then that I came across the book ‘Sustainable Energy: Without The Hot Air’ by David Mackay, a gloriously down-to-earth scientific guide to the entire sustainability debate, written by the chief science advisor to DECC and a Cambridge professor. In it, he thinks of every conceivable part of the energy puzzle, such as renewable production and everyday consumption, decarbonising and electrifying, but with a view I’ve yet to see replicated prior to and since my find. Mackay takes the highest level approach he can to the subject, sparing all the bull**** you normally find in policy and debate, giving you the bare facts in kWh and daily use, comparing heat pumps to freight transport and more, all the while tallying up a chart detailing the chances of us (he focuses on the UK but covers much of the world in examples) powering our Western lives on renewables alone. The verdict…not so good, unless some radical but obvious solutions are observed and carried out.

Within this wonderful book, and forgive my plugging, but it really is good and free to download at that, one chapter really jumped out at me from the pages; this was the nuclear chapter.

Both fission and its lesser mentioned but God-like cousin fusion are covered, with the same no-crap analysis which is sorely missing from much of the science and public dialogue. Throughout the rest of this post, I would like to pick some of the most powerfully simple and shocking pieces of data which will hopefully make you think twice the next time you hear about nuclear in the media, a media which often skews the information to their own devious ends. Of course, when you see such words and numbers, all credit is to David Mackay and his book, in which he urges anybody to use his data to send a message, something I plan on doing here.

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Posted at 9:30am and tagged with: nuclear, energy, fission, fusion, uranium, nuke, waste, thorium, fast-breeder, reactor, plant, carbon, heat, fuel, climate, protest, fukushima, chernobyl, 3-mile island, disaster, radiation, radioactive, UK, britain, world, money, deaths, coal, oil, gas,.

August 11th 2012

Peak Oil? Don’t Place Your Bets Just Yet, There’s More Where That Came From

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Peak oil. It sure is a well-worn term these days isn’t it. For how long now have all manner of ‘ists’, from economists, scientists, geologists to cultists been dreading the fateful day when global oil production slips past it’s highest point of generation and begins the disastrously slow tumble into the abyss. Has it come yet?

For many environmentalists and clean energy advocates, the coming of the peak age was something to be heralded, a point in time when big oil conglomerates and lobbies would finally get what was due, a humongous kick up the ass and warning bells so loud they would have no choice but to change their ways. Of course, and I must admit I fell prey somewhat to this foolish dream, this was never, ever going to actually happen, especially knowing what we know about these rich black gold-diggers and planet-wide market forces. When peak oil eventually strikes, they will simply dig even deeper and ravage even further to continue selling what they love best - oil and gas. Well folks, looks like we may have reached the next level of ignorance.

Based on a report by famed energy expert Leonardo Maugeri, published with the Harvard J.F.K. School of Government, the world is far from it’s final days of generous oil extraction, oh far far from it. According to his worryingly optimistic and frankly laid-back assessment, the current daily generation of 93 million barrels will exceed 110 million by 2020, the largest increase in per-day extraction in a decade since the 1980s. How, you may ask, is this even possible? I thought the world was drying up and oil was on its deathbed, ready to be succeeded by its ‘cleaner’ bastard son natural gas. Let’s look to America and Canada for the answer - fracking and the release of so-called ‘unconventional’ oils. 

By now we should all know roughly what fracking, or hydraulic fracturing, is all about. The bottom-line is that it really is not good for the environment, in so so many ways it would be silly to list them here. However fracking, and the jointly terrible extraction of both shale oil and oil shale (look it up, surprisingly they are two different things, both bad news) are completely rewriting the peak oil history books. With this new technology, the once scared and struggling oil companies, fearful of their future without reserves, can begin to restock and resupply on a scale practically unheard of until now. It’s estimated that a particular shale formation underlying North Dakota could hold as much untapped oil as a small Persian Gulf nation, without all the political risk and instability. How absolutely perfect for the Americans.

Add to the mix the unimaginably oil and natural gas reserves resting under most of the northern parts of Canada and Alaska, of which more becomes available as the Arctic ice caps melt and recede, and we’ve got enough oil to last us a goddamn lifetime of frivolity and combustion. Given Canada’s recent stance on global climate debates, notably the Kyoto Protocol, it would not surprise me in the least to see them capitalise on this newfound glory to its fullest extent, draining the land beneath them and flooding the market with sweet oil. Even though this ‘unconventional’ stuff is terribly hard to reach and even more difficult, costly and damaging to refine, the big companies will do it anyway, as it’s just what they know best. 

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Posted at 9:59am and tagged with: peak oil, oil, gas, climate, science, politics, economics, technology, extraction, news, smart, stupid, ignorant, lobby, maugeri, shale, fracking, barrel, market, money, fossil fuel, renewable, wind, sun, solar, coal, jobs, america, canada, alaska,.