Mixed Bag

Find this as a podcast at www.susbiz.biz from 14th October

Hello this is Anthony Day, it's Friday 14th October and this is the Sustainable Futures Report. It's a bit of a mixed bag this time. I started this week thinking there was no news and now it's a question of what to leave out. Anyway, this time we have blackouts in Australia, protests about fracking and other fossil fuels in Lancashire, Nottinghamshire and North Dakota, a report from the World Energy Council meeting in Istanbul, problems with incinerators in Cardiff and Derby and fog harvesting in Morocco. 

Up in Smoke?

In this week’s blog Jeremy Leggett jeremyleggett.net  talks about recycling, renewables, (of course) and the circular economy. I was going to talk about recycling because there is a worrying article in the Private Eye magazine for 13th October. An organisation called Viridor operates an incinerator at Splott near Cardiff. Yes it really is called that. It's a combined heat and power plant designed to produce energy from waste - enough to provide hot water for 50,000 homes. Unfortunately, in its two years of operation it has failed to reach the target. Viridor secured a £110m loan from the EU to set up the plant and if it doesn't meet its target it will not be considered to be a low carbon solution but merely a waste disposal facility. As such it would breach the terms of the loan. To overcome this, the plan is to increase throughput by 20% but Wales has a high level of recycling so has no more spare waste. Rubbish will be trucked in from 100 miles away- ideally plenty of plastic and cardboard because these have the high calorific value needed to raise efficiency levels. Of course such materials are ideal for recycling, but needs must. Forget the consequences of the extra transport mileage and the loss of materials which could have been reused. 

Private Eye reports a similar sort of problem in Derby where the council has signed an incineration contract and is committed to supplying the operator with 150,000 tonnes a year of high calorific value waste. It finds that it won’t have enough of this waste after recycling. Solution? Charge residents for brown bin organic waste collection and abandon recycling collections altogether in some parts of the city. Private Eye claims that as a result recycling rates in Derby have fallen from 50% to 34%. But in these straitened times no council can risk financial penalties. 

Protests

It’s been a week of protests.

There were protests in Lancashire last week against fracking and protests in other parts of the country as well. This follows the decision by Communities Secretary Sajid Javid to allow drilling at Preston New Road in Fylde, as I reported in the last Sustainable Futures Report.

A detailed report from a planning inspector was carried out on another potential fracking site in Lancashire, at Roseacre Wood. The report found that the threat to road safety caused by heavy vehicles moving to and from the site was so serious as to outweigh any benefits from fracking and the the inspector recommended that permission should be refused. The Secretary of State said that he would authorise the operation provided that the concerns about road safety could be dealt with. He said that fracking would support  64,000 jobs. Who can oppose something that will support 64,000 jobs? Makes a great headline, but can it be substantiated? How do you actually get to 64,000 jobs? How long will they be supported for? Just the construction phase, the production phase or for ever? And is this the result of the one well, or does it depend on drilling multiple wells? And are these Britsh jobs for British people? Who cares - it's the headline that counts.

Meanwhile in Nottinghamshire would-be frackers are frustrated by a covenant which has been discovered to restrict what can be done on their chosen site. Nuisance, noise and noxious activities are all prohibited and at least part of the site is an SSSI Site of Special Scientific Interest and wildlife reserve. Formerly a Ministry of Defence (MOD) missile base, when it was sold off in 1969 this covenant was placed on future owners of the land. The lawyers are sorting it out.

Across the pond US actress Shailene Woodley has been arrested https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=shailene%20woodley%20arrested  during a protest in North Dakota against a huge oil pipeline project that will cross four states. The Dakota Access pipeline project has drawn huge protests.

Native Americans have halted its construction in North Dakota, saying it will desecrate sacred land and damage the environment.

The Divergent star was arrested at a construction site as she was broadcasting the protest, which involved about 200 people, on Facebook,. Police say she was one of 27 people arrested on charges of criminal trespass and engaging in a riot.

In the Facebook Live footage, Shailene said she had been walking peacefully back to her vehicle when "they grabbed me by my jacket and said that I wasn't allowed to continue... and they have giant guns and batons and zip ties and they are not letting me go”. She handed her phone to her mother who continued filming. As she was led away with her hands cuffed, she said she had been singled out from hundreds of other protesters "because I'm well known, because I have 40,000 people watching”.

Protest is nothing new and sadly it's rarely effective. One exception of course is the poll tax riots which led to the end of the poll tax and the end of Margaret Thatcher. But there’s a long way to go and in any case the US government is preoccupied with an election and the UK government is preoccupied with Brexit, whatever that means. Oh of course, it means Brexit.

Blackout

In Australia, the state of South Australia lost all electrical power on 28th September and it took up to 24 hours for it to be restored to all consumers. The reasons for the the outage are still under review, although some have pointed fingers at the large proportion of renewables in the generating mix, principally wind. It’s not as simple as that. The state gets 40% of its power from wind and all coal-fired generation has been mothballed. How green. The rest comes from a mix of gas-fired power and two interconnectors that link it to Victoria’s brown coal-fired power plants. Not so green. The problem with the wind power is its intermittency and the fact that other sources of power have to be manipulated, in order to stabilise the supply. This is complicated by the fact that the transmission grid was built long before wind and other renewables were ever thought of, and it has to cope with a very high level of domestic solar installations as well.

The trigger for the problem was a storm which crossed the state causing damage and blowing down 22 transmission pylons. Six wind farms shut down, the interconnector to Victoria became overloaded and tripped and the rest of the network collapsed. The problem came when they attempted to restart the system.  According to a report from ABC news http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-10-06/uhlmann-on-power-blackout-in-south-australia/7906844  on 5th October there was difficulty in getting sufficient power to restart the power station at Torrens Island and to restore the interconnector. Now I’m no engineer, but I don’t understand this. The plant at Torrens Island is a thermal power station which means it burns natural gas to raise steam and drive conventional turbines which drive generators. Surely you only need to light the boiler, raise steam and off you go. I’d be really interested in an expert view on this. The article also mentions a gas turbine power station at Pelican Point near Adelaide. Apparently this had been off-line at the time of the blackout because up till then there had been a supply of cheaper wind-generated power. After the blackout the message came from Pelican Point that it would take four hours for the station to come back on line. I thought that gas turbine stations were flexible and responded rapidly to changes in demand. Why four hours? An aircraft jet engine, which is also a gas turbine, starts up in a matter of minutes. The station uses combined cycle gas turbines, which means that the hot exhaust gases are used to raise steam which drives steam turbines. Maybe this complexity is what makes the plant slow to start. Expert advice, please.

I’ve heard it said by those that know that if the UK grid ever blacked out it would be very challenging to restart it. It’s never been done before, and you certainly can’t practise by turning it off to see what happens when you try and get it going again. The National Grid promises to publish its annual Winter Outlook Report later this month, which will forecast how much spare capacity or safety margin there will be in the event of a hard winter. I’ll keep you posted.

Peak Energy

Per capita energy demand will peak before 2030, finds a new World Energy Council report launched at the 23rd World Energy Congress in Istanbul. http://www.worldenergy.org/news-and-media/press-releases/world-energy-scenarios-2016-report-global-energy-demand-growth-set-to-fall/
The report examines three scenarios and even the most optimistic is worrying. For example, by 2060 we could still be using fossil fuels for 50% of our primary energy. While the use of solar and wind energy have grown rapidly, the fossil fuel share of primary energy has changed by just 5% in the last 45 years. The implications for global warming and meeting the COP21 targets are stark. The report says that “limiting global warming to 2℃ will require an exceptional and enduring effort, far beyond already pledged commitments, and with very high carbon prices.” The best scenario sees emissions in 2060 to fall 61% below 2014 levels: the worst sees them rise by 5%. In all scenarios the global carbon budget will be exceeded within the next 30 - 40 years. This means that total all-time emissions will exceed 1,000Gt CO2, the level at which it is believed it will be impossible to stop runaway climate change. The UK government has repeated its commitment to lowering domestic emissions to 80% below 1990 levels. The UK currently accounts for around 2% of global emissions. We will need far-reaching global consensus to make a practical difference.

I'm conscious that the Sustainable Futures Report  is in danger of becoming an energy newsletter. Energy is of course a very important part of sustainability, but as I said last week, there's an awful lot more to it than that and I intend to cover a much wider range of topics.

The Human Angle

Sustainability is about ensuring that the planet is protected as a habitat for the human race, but the social issues and the maintenance of a stable and prosperous society are in my view equally part of sustainability. The refugee crisis is one of the most pressing global concerns, although some would argue that we ain’t seen nothing yet. Conflicts are already driving migration, but climate change and particularly rising sea levels are likely to displace millions more. Inevitably there is conflict between those seeking simply to survive and those who resent any encroachment on their present comfortable lifestyles, as well as those who are just surviving and fear that refugees will push them all below subsistence level. It’s probably the most serious and most difficult issue of our time, and one I will return to.

This week I chaired the HR Leadership Exchange in London and had the benefit of listening to some leading experts in the field. We were talking not about global issues but about changes in the workplace which will have profound effects on workers and consumers and could themselves destabilise society. The key issue is the nature of work, the availability of work and the distribution of rewards across society. Work gives people status in society, gives structure and purpose to their lives and gives them a right to some share in society’s wealth. At the moment, in the UK and the West, the divide between rich and poor is rapidly widening. Automation and robotics are eliminating not just low-level jobs but also more and more roles where skills and experience are traditionally required. An app on the BBC website http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34066941  lets you enter your job title and it tells you how likely your job is to be replaced by technology. For example it predicts that people working as Book-keepers, payroll managers and wages clerks have a 97% chance of being replaced and so do bank and post office clerks. Assembly workers are up at 92%.  Some people will be pleased to see that traffic wardens have a 79% chance of being replaced, although some unkind people might say that they’re robots already. Even legal professionals, depending on their role, have a 66% chance of being automated out of a job. Maybe it’s best to be a career advisor with only a 24% risk, or even a conference organiser with just a 4% risk. How does your job measure up?

 There are software tools now which will examine spreadsheets in detail, identify trends, variances and black spots and after training automatically produce written reports and PowerPoint presentations for the board. No longer will workers have to sweat into the night over the figures, but they may no longer have a job. The key question is whether they will have the resources to enjoy increased leisure, or simply be stuck with endless idleness. Such people may have little interest in saving the planet or working for the good of society. The irony is that others who have profited to an enormous extent from the technological revolution also seem to have little interest in the good of society. The Apples, Starbucks, Googles, Facebooks of this world seek to minimise the taxes they pay by all legal means possible and thereby avoid paying for the upkeep of the society which facilitates their businesses, trains and supports their workers and provides the consumers without whom there would be no business. Of course some of these organisations have philanthropic foundations with ambitious and altruistic objectives. But tax isn’t optional. Not morally, anyway. And who should decide about how to invest society’s wealth? Democratic governments or unelected entrepreneurs?

Outlook Fog

Meanwhile, in Africa the Moroccans are harvesting fog. http://www.middleeasteye.net/news/fog-harvesting-brings-water-morocco-s-rural-communities-1765872668  We may think that we have problems in our Western society but many parts of the world have basic concerns like the lack of clean drinking water. On the edge of Morocco’s Sahara Desert, more than 400 people from five villages will have running water in their homes. No wells or springs or new oases. Instead, their water is in constant flow from the sky. Fog harvesting uses specialised mesh, hung between poles, to trap the water droplets in fog. It’s a bit like dewdrops on a spider’s web. The wind pushes fog through the mesh, where droplets are trapped, condense, fall and amass in a container placed at the base of the unit.  Drop-by-drop, they constitute a substantial amount of water.

The project, in the village of Ait Baamrane in Southwest Morocco, includes 600 square meters of specialised  mesh netting, seven storage reservoirs, 6 solar panels and over 10,000 metres of piping. It is considered to be the largest fog harvesting installation in the world. Before the project, most women spent more than three hours a day fetching water from a distant and frequently depleted wells. 

The United Nations has awarded the project a prize under the Momentum for Change Women for Results focus area for its women-led climate adaptation initiative, providing an environmentally-friendly water source to combat the effects desertification.

“It is impressive to see so many original and creative ways to tackle climate change,” said United Nations Climate Change Conference (UNFCCC) Spokesman Nick Nuttal.   “It’s also great to see a winner from Morocco, this year’s host of the United Nations Climate Change Conference.”

It’s another world. But it’s our world too. We all have responsibility for all of it.

And that's it for another week. This is Anthony Day thanking you for listening to the Sustainable Futures Report and hoping that you will listen to the next one next week. I'm always keen to have your feedback and particularly if anybody can answer those questions about why power stations take a long time to start up I'd be really interested. mail@anthony-day.com 

Who knows what next week will bring? I'm keeping my eyes and ears open and I hope whatever I find to be interesting and useful and informative. So until next week have a great week and I'll talk to you again next Friday. Bye for now!

No Surprises

This is the text of the Sustainable Futures Report published as a podcast at susbiz.biz

Welcome to the latest edition of the Sustainable Futures Report. It’s Friday 7th October 2016 and this is Anthony Day. I’m delighted to be back after an extended summer break and pleased to report that I am in robust health. Thanks for your messages and concern.

This week: despite opposition from the local council, the borough council and the county council who all threw it out the government has overridden them and confirmed that fracking can go ahead at a site in Lancashire. Unfortunately the decision is no real surprise. 

What does Brexit mean for sustainability? 

The oil price is on the move again, but where’s it going? Why are children taking the US government to court? 

Large problems with nuclear power, and not just at Hinkley C. 

News from Canada on carbon taxes, and Suncor, a major producer of oil from tar sands wants to strand some of its assets.

First of all though, I’m going to take the opportunity to reiterate my purpose and motivation in producing and presenting the Sustainable Futures Report. It’s a weekly review of sustainability issues. 

This podcast aims to be informative and interesting. Some of the content is aimed at you as a consumer and some is for you as a professional, or as a business leader, an employee, a sole trader or an entrepreneur. I want to make you aware of current news about sustainability and how it might affect you. Of course I won’t pretend to cover the whole field. After all, sustainability includes climate change, population, energy, waste, resource scarcity (including materials and water), the circular economy, technology and a whole range of social and political issues. I’m not going to ignore politics, but this is not a party-political podcast. I’ll praise policies that I believe in and I’ll not hesitate to criticise those that I believe wrong, ill thought-out or dangerous. In the coming weeks I hope to include more interviews. I’ve got a number of people in mind. If you have something to say or you’d like to suggest someone we should hear from please get in touch - mail@anthony-day.com

I generally take a UK perspective, but we certainly can’t ignore the international context. There are listeners in the US, Canada, China, Australia and across Europe. I’ll look for content relevant to all.

The Sustainable Futures Report has recently been invited to join the Better World Podcast Collective. You can find it at http://www.narrativematters.co.uk/better-world-podcast-collective There you’ll find a number of podcasts on sustainability and related issues.  

The UK government’s ruling on fracking this week, permitting Cuadrilla to re-start operations in Lancashire, northwest England, is hardly unexpected despite local and national opposition. 

Just to recap. Fracking is the injection of water and certain chemicals into rocks below ground in order to crack them and release gas or oil. The technique has been extensively used in the United States and has created much controversy. Theoretically there are vast reserves of gas in the northwest of England and of oil in the south-east. This operation by Cuadrilla is to determine the extent of expected reserves and find out whether in fact they can be extracted. In the short-term the UK is committed to using gas both for domestic heating and for generating electricity. We already import some 20% of gas by pipeline from Europe and by sea from the Middle East. If we can extract gas from deposits in the UK it clearly improves our energy security position. We won’t be dependent on foreign suppliers, although we will have to pay world prices. Compare this with Germany which is heavily dependent on gas supplies from Russia and arguably their foreign policy has been restrained as a result.

On the other hand opponents claim that fracking in the United States has polluted drinking water and caused earth tremors. Certainly earth tremors occurred here in the UK some years ago when Cuadrilla was drilling previously. Opponents are also concerned about what will happen to the contaminated water which is extracted as part of the fracking process, and to the contaminated water which is never recovered but just seeps away underground. The water that is recovered either has to be trucked away or in some places it is simply stored in large ponds. This water is often mildly radioactive and cannot be treated in conventional sewage farms. Whether or not this contaminated water is trucked away, there will be a high level of lorry movements to deliver the fracking water to the site, certainly in the early stages and again if the well needs to be re-injected.

Kevin Hollinrake is MP for Thirsk and Malton, an area across the Pennines where the local council has approved fracking. He is in favour of it, but in a parliamentary debate last year he admitted that at least 10,000 wells would be needed across the UK just to replace the gas which we import by sea from Qatar in the Middle East. Multiply that by the lorry journeys needed to deliver and recover the fracking water and to collect the gas and you can appreciate why so many people are claiming that fracking will ruin their quality of life. 

Pam Foster, co-founder of Residents Action on Fylde Fracking, (Fylde is the local area) said: "This is a total denial of democracy. Our parish council, our borough council, our county council all threw this application out.

"We have pursued every democratic channel we can do, there's nothing left for us. We're pretty disgusted and very upset."

She said the campaigners would continue to fight fracking "peacefully and legally”.

Another argument is that at the end of the day (probably five years at the earliest) we will have gas which is another fossil fuel which produces CO2 when burnt. It will also contribute to the poor air quality which is killing thousands of people prematurely in the UK. 

Is the government backing the right horse? It’s not certain that the gas can be extracted and nobody said it would be cheap. Why not invest in wind and solar? We have the technologies. We know they work. Battery and storage technology is developing rapidly. Why not embark on an energy efficiency drive, raising awareness, insulating homes and encouraging people to use less? Of course the privatised electricity and gas companies might object to the effect on their profits that that would bring.

When you consider the government’s energy strategy, resting on fracking and Hinkley C, I think it’s sensible to prepare for blackouts.

And in other news since the last episode in early July. Of course Brexit has held the headlines, particularly in this week of the Conservative party conference. I could discuss Brexit at length but everything is still unclear and it would only be mere speculation. More important is the actions of the new government. The Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) has disappeared and its responsibilities transferred into the business department. The former Minister for DECC has done remarkably well because as you all know, Amber Rudd is now Home Secretary. The environment is in the hands of Andrea Leadsom, failed leadership candidate, whose major policy announcement seems to be that she wants to bring back foxhunting. The key Brexit issue is how regulations on pollution, the environment and health and safety and so on will develop after the break. EU regulations have driven the UK to clean up some of the dirtiest beaches in Europe and the pressure is on to cut air pollution which kills up to 50,000 people prematurely each year. Will we relax the regulations which the UK as a member of the EU is currently subject to, in order to make things simpler for business, or will we maintain them to facilitate trade with our former EU partners? The signs are that the government intends to turn the U.K.'s back on the EU single market so what they actually do with regulations is anybody's guess. That is the problem. Apart from being told that Brexit means Brexit, we still have very little idea of how things are likely to turn out. The government of course is in exactly the same position because it all depends on the negotiations which will not even start until Article 50 is invoked and that may not happen until March next year. No wonder the £ has been hitting a 31-year low!

One piece of good news from the government is that the UK will ratify the COP21 Paris Agreement before the end of the year. The shine was taken off this announcement slightly by the EU Commission which reported that it had ratified COP21 on behalf of all members, which means that the UK had done so automatically. Let’s hope that the government doesn’t change its mind once Brexit is complete. In practice, however, ratification only means that governments are committed to the limits which they promised in their submissions  to COP21, the famous INDCs (Intended Nationally Determined Contributions) - contributions to the reduction of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. There are no sanctions for non-performance, so nothing to stop the government dragging its feet. Still, the US and China have very publicly announced their commitment to COP21 so, together with the EU and other signatories, a majority has been reached, which makes the agreement binding. 

Donald Trump could change all that if he gets elected. Well we never thought he’d get nominated.

Remember what George W Bush did to Bill Clinton’s commitment to the Kyoto agreement?

The oil price is up - and down. At the beginning of September Brent Crude spiked from $47 to $50, fell and hovered around $46 and now it’s back around $50. Still a lot higher than February’s $26, but way off the $130 we saw in 2011. The reason for the spike is that OPEC announced that they were going to restrict production. The spike came in September but OPEC wasn’t planning to actually do anything until November; hence the price is volatile. James Spencer of Portland Fuel doesn’t buy it. He doesn’t believe that the OPEC members will be able to come to any agreement on which countries will cut, by how much or when. In any case, if they did succeed in driving the price back up by their actions it would make the situation more favourable for the shale operators. They have seen their overheads fall dramatically in the two years that OPEC - Saudi in particular - has been trying to put them out of business by keeping the price low. Now these oil states need the money. It’s a two-edged sword. You can find more in James’s monthly Oil Market Report, which is always an interesting read. Go to http://www.portland-fuel-price-protection.com/market-reports/oi/ 

Jeremy Leggett looks at the long term outlook for oil in his regular “State of the Transition” updates. That’s the transition from fossil fuels to renewables. He reports that there are $500m state-of-the-art ships built specifically for the oil industry for exploration and production and they have effectively been mothballed  without ever being used because the demand for oil is not there. There are serious doubts whether these ships could be successfully recommissioned if they are ever needed. Goldman Sachs complains that Big Oil has never been a very profitable investment. If they have to write off any $500m ships that will certainly not help Big Oil’s bottom line.  Meanwhile, a report from the International Energy Agency (IEA ) shows that investment in new renewables in 2015 was, for the first time ever, more than enough to cover rising global electricity demand growth.

Why are children taking the US government to court? 

Back in April I reported that in the first lawsuit to involve a planet, Judge Thomas Coffin of the United States Federal District Court in Eugene, Oregon, ruled in favour of twenty-one plaintiffs, ages 8 to 19, on behalf of future generations of Americans in a landmark constitutional climate change case brought against the Federal Government and the Fossil Fuel Industry.

The lawsuit is led by Our Children’s Trust http://www.ourchildrenstrust.org/us/federal-lawsuit/  and alleges that the Federal Government is violating the Plaintiffs’ constitutional and public trust rights by promoting the use of fossil fuels.

The judge unequivocally rejected all arguments raised by the Federal Government and the Fossil Fuel Industry in their Motions to Dismiss and the case came back to court last month. It was heard by Federal Judge Ann Aiken who has promised her ruling within 60 days. That will state only whether the case must be struck out or whether it can go forward to trial. There’s nothing rapid in the legal system. Watch this space.

The Hinkley C saga continues. Yes I know that after initially delaying a decision the new British Prime Minister gave the go-ahead for this new nuclear power station to be built by the French with the financial support of the Chinese. So is it all over? Fears nevertheless remain that it will be too expensive, too difficult to build and far too late to bridge the UK’s energy gap. Anyway, it’s not expected to enter production before 2025, even by its most ardent supporters, and Theresa May will be long gone by then. Meanwhile China has the go-ahead to build two more nuclear stations to its own design in the UK. China is also part of a consortium bidding to purchase the National Grid. Did the Brexiteers say something about taking back control?

The Ecologist magazine reports that Sizewell B and 27 other EDF nuclear plants are at risk of catastrophic failure. That’s the EDF which is to build Hinkley C and after several years’ delay has not so far managed to build similar plants in Finland or at Flamanville in Normandy. http://www.theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2988175/sizewell_b_and_27_other_edf_nuclear_plants_at_risk_of_catastrophic_failure.html The Ecologist is referring to a report http://www.greenpeace.org/france/PageFiles/266171/Note_LargeAndAssociates_EN_26092016.pdf  prepared by Large Associates and commissioned by Greenpeace France. It has been discovered that at Flamanville, a plant under construction, the level of carbon in the steel of the reactor cap appears to be so high as to make the steel dangerously brittle. The French nuclear inspectorate is still considering whether to permit construction to continue or to demand that the castings be replaced. The Large Associates report finds that castings manufactured by Areva at its Le Creusot forge and installed at other operational nuclear sites, have similar problems. The report says, “As a result of Areva's failures, a significant share of the French nuclear reactor fleet is at increased risk of severe radiological accident, including fuel core meltdown. However, there is no simple or quick fix to this problem.” EDF has acknowledged the issue, although denies that it is as serious as suggested, and will carry out extended tests at these plants during planned maintenance downtime. Downtime periods may be extended as a result. In view of this, and also because of doubts as to whether EDF has the financial strength to take on the construction of Hinkley C, Moodies have downgraded EDF’s credit rating. Mind you, If things do go wrong with these critical components, credit will be our very last concern.

Listener Imran Jiwa, Principal at Full Circle Consulting Ltd writes:

“Some good news from Canada: we're implementing a national carbon tax floor across the country.  Provinces that don't develop their own cap and trade or carbon tax plan will be required to do so by the Federal Government.  

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/canada-to-impose-nationwide-carbon-price-environment-minister-says/article31946279/  

“The specifics have not been outlined, but this is a step in the right direction.  However, there are two areas of concern: 

“(1) No updates to the reduction strategy imposed by the Harper government.  The opinion from the Minister of Environment is that the presence of policies is more important than the reductions themselves.  It shows that despite how committed the new government is to the environment - compromise is always needed in order to move forward.   

“(2) It is unclear how the carbon tax will increase over time.  We are just now moving to $30 in BC (in 2018 for Alberta).  While Exxon in the States disclosed to their shareholders that they are internally budgeting a $60 price, the effectiveness at curbing emissions is unlikely. 

“At least we're moving forward”, says Imran,…”albeit, slowly”.  Given this pace, adaptation strategies should starting taking priority over mitigation, in his opinion. 

Also in Canada, Suncor, a major producer of oil from tar sands wants to strand some of its assets. What does this mean? http://www.desmog.ca/2016/08/02/suncor-opens-conversation-about-stranded-assets-alberta-s-oilsands 

Tar sands consist of sand impregnated with bitumen, or vice versa, and the bitumen is extracted and eventually refined into oil. The extraction process is energy intensive as it involves a lot of steam which is required to heat the bitumen so it will flow. Oil produced from tar sands is therefore very expensive in terms of the energy needed for production versus the energy content of the oil.

Suncor is licensed by the Alberta Province government to extract oil from a given area, and it appears that it is obliged to extract every last barrel. Some areas are far more difficult and expensive to extract, so the company has requested that it be allowed to abandon them and consider the oil there as stranded assets. The state has yet to rule, but it looks like a win-win situation. Suncor will significantly reduce its costs and also reduce the environment damage that the process causes. Tar sands is one of the dirtiest sources of oil, devastating large areas and leaving behind lagoons of water condensed from the steam used in the process. Of course stopping it altogether would be the most sustainable outcome, but that’s not likely to happen while there’s still demand from south of the border.

That’s all for this week and there will be another Sustainable Futures Report next Friday.

This is Anthony Day saying thank you for listening and do send feedback to mail@anthony-day.com. 

By the way, my bees had an excellent summer and I got 76kg, 168lb, of honey from just two hives. I also got lots of wax. D’you know, I think I’ll make some candles.

Not the Sustainable Futures Report

This is the text of the 2nd September podcast, available at susbiz.biz  

Hello. This is Anthony Day and this is not the Sustainable Futures Report.

As you know, I decided to take July and August off and I had a great summer. I promised to come back to you today, 2nd September, but I’ve decided to suspend this podcast for a further month. Here’s why. Two weeks ago I had emergency brain surgery. Not nearly as dramatic as it might sound although it was quite serious at the time. Our NHS is truly wonderful and I'm happy to say I am making a rapid recovery. However my next appointment with the consultant is on 28 September so I have decided to suspend the Sustainable Futures Report until then.

I'll take the opportunity to review the purpose and direction of the report. My aim has been to bring you topical news on issues relating to sustainability and also to report on new technologies which will help us to make the world more sustainable. I hope it's interesting and I hope it's valuable. Each episode is around 3,000 words each week and with research, writing and recording it takes a day to a day and a half. I have readers and listeners all over the world, but to be perfectly frank not an awful lot. I need to be sure that what I am doing is useful and of course if you have any ideas of what you would like to see included please don't fail to contact me: mail@Anthony-day.com 

Of course we had a busy summer on the political scene in the UK with Brexit, a change of government, the abolition of the Department of Energy and Climate Change, questions over environmental policies and a spat with the Chinese over the Hinkley C power station. Why start building it, given that nobody has yet been able to make this design work? In fact this summer has been a whole series of questions and it's only now that we're beginning to get some idea of what the answers will be. By the end of the month we might have a clearer idea of which way we are going, but there is no doubt that Brexit is going to make things immensely complicated and it's going to strain our resources, our civil service and relations between those who voted out and those who wanted to stay.

So that's it for the moment: probably the shortest Sustainable Futures Report of all time. Do get in touch if you have some ideas of what I should include in future episodes. Do get in touch if you’re an expert and would like to do an interview. The next Sustainable Futures Report will appear on Friday 7 October. Hope all goes well for you until then.

This is Anthony Day. As I explained this has not been the Sustainable Futures Report but there will be another one in early October. 

Thanks for listening

Over and Out

Broadcast as a podcast at www.susbiz.biz on Friday 1st July

Well we’re not quite out and I sincerely hope it's not all over.

Hello, this is Anthony Day, this is the Sustainable Futures Report for Friday 1st July and in a change to the advertised programme this is the final episode before September.

Yes I'm going to talk about Brexit, I'll try and avoid all the things which have already been said. This week IEMA presented an important webinar on the legal consequences of Brexit for environmental regulation and I’ll tell you what I learnt. I’ll tell you about the Sustainable Best Practice Mastermind group  and the new LinkedIn group which will take it forward.

Energy Minister Amber Rudd remains committed to carbon reduction. There’s more helium than we thought - why is this good news? But first, electric lorries are on trial. 

Electric Highways

Electric lorries? Well no, perhaps more electric highways.

Global Construction Review informs us that “A truck-clogged traffic artery leading to the Port of Los Angeles will be the testing ground for the world’s first “eHighway” – a stretch of road strung with overhead cables to power heavy vehicles that will coast along without burning diesel and spouting fumes.” 

Actually Los Angeles was beaten to it by Sweden which opened a 2.2 km electrified section of the E16 motorway between Sweden and Norway last week. For both projects the catenary infrastructure is installed by Siemens, working with Mack trucks in the US and Scania in Sweden. On normal roads the trucks burn diesel or natural gas but, when they hit the eHighway, sensors locate the overhead cables and the trucks automatically connect. The system lets trucks change lanes to overtake other vehicles at speeds of up to 90km/h. Siemens claims that the eHighway system is about twice as efficient as burning diesel, and is emissions-free. The trucks’ braking systems also feed energy back into the grid. The Swedish government aims to achieve zero fossil fuel transportation by 2030. It has predicted that using electricity from renewable sources to power the trucks will lead to a reduction in carbon of up to 90%. It sees the eHighway system as one way of reducing carbon emissions without building railways where none exist now. 

The next logical stage must be to couple multiple trucks together under the control of a single driver. And the stage after that is to have no drivers at all. All we need is an overhead power line infrastructure and a supply of electricity. I can’t help thinking that this might be a much better investment than the UK’s HS2, the planned high speed rail link.Helium

The discovery of a helium gas field in Tanzania's East African Rift Valley could help ease fears of a global helium shortage on our planet, according to the Washington Post, which reported the news last Wednesday.

Helium

Helium is a noble gas used for the super-cooled magnets in MRI machines; a mixture of 80% helium and 20% oxygen is used by deep-sea divers and helium-neon gas lasers are used to scan barcodes at supermarket checkouts. Vast amounts are needed to keep superconducting magnets cool at the Large Hadron Collider at Cern near Geneva. Helium is also used to blow up party balloons but fears of a shortage led Nobel laureate, the late Robert Richardson, to say that helium balloons should cost £75 each to reflect the true cost of the gas.

Helium is the second most abundant element in the observable universe, but Earth’s initial stocks seeped into space many billions of years ago.  It cannot be synthesised; it only occurs in nature. It cannot be replaced or renewed. What is available for use today is produced inside rocks through the steady radioactive decay of uranium and other elements. The hard part is finding where the gas builds up into useful reserves. Now a team from the UK and Norway has uncovered a huge resource in Tanzania after applying expertise gleaned from oil and gas exploration to understand how helium is produced in rocks and where it accumulates.

According to independent analysts, this natural store of helium found in the Rift Valley contains an estimated 54bn cubic feet of the gas, enough to inflate a similar number of party balloons, or to fill 1,200,000 hospital MRI scanners.

Let the party continue!

Who is Amber Rudd?

Speaking at the Business and Climate Summit in London this week, energy secretary Amber Rudd said that Brexit would make it harder for the UK to tackle climate change but its commitment to do so would be undiminished by the EU referendum result. "While I think the UK’s role in dealing with a warming planet may have been made harder by the decision last Thursday, our commitment to dealing with it has not gone away," she said. She also insisted that the proposed new nuclear plant at Hinkley Point would not be affected by Brexit.

On Thursday the Government announced that it had agreed with the Climate Change Committee and proposed that the emissions target for the  fifth budgetary period covering 2028 to 2032 should be set at 1,725 MtCO2e. edi.net, the organisers of the edi sustainability conference report that if met, the Fifth Carbon Budget would put the UK firmly on track to meet the legally-binding carbon reduction targets laid out in the UK’s Climate Change Act (2008), which sets an 80% emissions reduction target for 2050.

According to the CCC, the UK is currently on track to outperform the Second and Third Carbon Budgets, but off track to meet the Fourth - which covers the period 2023-27 and requires a 50% emissions reduction from 1990 levels.

Ahead of this announcement, concerns had been raised by green groups and sustainability leaders that the Government's Fifth Carbon Budget would be postponed or perhaps even weakened in the wake of Britain’s decision to leave the European Union (EU) last week. But Amber Rudd had already made it clear at the Business and Climate Summit that this acceptance of the CCC's proposals sends a clear message to green investors that the Government remains “fully committed” to delivering a clean and affordable energy supply for Britain.

Amber Rudd has a history of firm commitment to environmental and sustainability issues, but since becoming energy minister she has become a hate figure in some quarters. It was Amber Rudd who announced the block on on-shore wind farms just after the last election. It’s Amber Rudd who says fracking is the future. It’s Amber Rudd who continues to insist that the nuclear power station at Hinkley C will be built, despite resignations at contractors edf, technical problems with the proposed design, cost overruns and extensive delays at similar plants under construction and the fact that it will make no contribution to UK supplies for at least 10 years. Chancellor George Osborne, a known climate sceptic, appears to have been in overall control of energy policy, so some would say that she’s simply been mouthing his words. Amber Rudd was on the Remain side of the referendum debate, unlike her junior minister Andrea Leadsom, so her continued role in government may be in question. The fact that she has pushed through adoption of the CCC’s proposals for the Fifth Carbon Budget is encouraging. Hopefully the government will be too busy dealing with the consequences of Brexit to have time to come back and revise it.

Unlike Andrea Leadsom, Amber Rudd made it clear that she would not enter the race for the Tory leadership. When asked at the summit about the possibility of a climate-sceptic leader she said:

 “When I consider who to back as leader of the Conservative party and future Prime Minister, knowing where they stand on this issue, which is so important to me and I think is so important to the whole country and to everyone here, will be absolutely central to who I support.

“And I will be very, very clear about that and very vocal in holding anybody to account on that and getting the sort of commitment that will reassure all of us.”

This was taken to be a direct criticism of leadership favourite Boris Johnson who has expressed climate change scepticism in the past. And then at 12 noon on Thursday as nominations closed and I finalised this script we learnt that Boris would not stand for the leadership.

You couldn’t make it up!

BREXIT

And now to the legal consequences of Brexit. IEMA, the Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment presented a webinar this week on the consequences of Brexit. It was their most popular webinar ever: 700 people signed up and overwhelmed the system. Fortunately they made a recording so I've been able to catch up with it. You can find that recording at iema.net/event-reports . Here’s my account of what was discussed. If you want further information or intend to act on the information provided I urge you to take the advice of the presenters. The session was introduced by Josh Fothergill, policy lead at IEMA, j.fothergill@iema.net and the main presenter was Simon Colvin, Partner and National head of the environment team at law firm Weightmans, simon.colvin@weightmans.com .

Josh reported that in polls of 4000 institute members prior to the referendum 83% believed that EU regulations were beneficial  and 76% thought the regulations were positive for business. He didn't think that there had been enough on sustainability and the environment in the referendum campaign and he hoped that DECC would continue to adopt the fifth carbon budget by the end of June as normal. Which we now know it has done.

Simon Colvin admitted that he went through a range of emotions on Friday, finally arriving at acceptance. His presentation set out what had happened, what was going to happen, and what we could or should do about it. To start with, he said that the referendum vote has no legal effect, although the government accepts that it has a moral duty to follow it. Many people expected that the results would be to remain, so many people were unprepared. 

So what's next? Article 50 is the piece of European legislation which governs the exit of a member from the EU. The process is that the departing member must notify the European Council and then the process must be completed within two years unless this is extended by the unanimous agreement of all 27 remaining members. He thought this was unlikely, so two years would be the limit. Under article 50 the departing country takes no part in the discussions around the exit. Indeed, this week we have seen the first EU meetings for 43 years held with UK representatives excluded. The exit agreement has to be approved by the European commission and by the European Parliament. Clearly under article 50 power lies with the remaining states and the process is designed to be difficult to deter states from leaving. Article 50 can only be triggered by the departing state although the EU could possibly insist if there is undue delay. The British government is quite happy to defer invoking the article because the two year time clock starts ticking from the moment that that action is taken. They want to wait until there is a new Conservative leader, a new prime minister and effectively a new government. Simon thought that there was a possibility that there could be a general election in the autumn, but he felt that the timescale was very tight and that this was unlikely to happen. He thought also that a second referendum was theoretically possible, but highly unlikely. Once article 50 has been triggered then the EU will insist that the exit is completed. There will be no opportunity for reviewing the agreement or putting it to a second referendum.

A serious problem is that the focus of politicians and civil servants is going to be exclusively on the process of unwinding UK membership of the EU for the next 2 1/2 to 3 years. This means that everything else is effectively going to be on hold. The environment will be some way down the agenda because emphasis on negotiations on the economy and trade will take priority. Environmental regulations are unlikely to change in any case until it is clear how our trading relations will change because to some extent they will be interdependent. The financial conduct authority issued a statement last Friday morning saying that there would be no immediate change to financial regulations. The environment agency has said something similar privately. Simon was concerned that in the face of uncertainty there will be reluctance to change which could lead to effective paralysis over the next few years. He thought that there would be a new piece of primary legislation possibly called the independence act which would confirm the status of laws which are based on EU legislation. There would also be a piece of legislation to repeal or amend the European communities act which gives EU law precedence over UK law.

It is known that DEFRA has prepared a contingency plan for Brexit but so far this has been confidential. It is now time to reveal and discuss it. There is a great deal to be done with legislation. For example there is a significant amount of referential legislation. That means that there are UK laws which simply say that they will enact specific European regulations or directives. Once these no longer apply, the UK laws will have to be rewritten to provide the detail which is now in the European documents. There is also the question of how we treat new EU laws issued in the next two years while we remain a member of the EU. Decisions have to be made on whether we adopt or replace technical standards. In many environmental areas there is a policy vacuum because the UK government has been content to follow the EU lead.

As has been mentioned elsewhere, there are serious doubts as to whether the UK civil service has sufficient people with the skills and experience to handle this immense volume of work.

Once we are finally out of the EU the European Court of Justice will no longer have jurisdiction, although it will continue to do so during the two-year period. There is therefore a question of at what point we stop referring issues to that court, bearing in mind that its proceedings can take a year or more. There's also the question of caselaw and whether it will continue to be binding and acceptable as a precedent in UK courts after we leave the EU. Simon thought it would, but he also said that there may well be barristers who might see it as a point of weakness and there could be increased litigation.

Well, what can sustainability professionals do about all this? The first question is what legal obligations are written in to your environmental management system. Do they relate to the UK or EU legislation? This needs to be reviewed. There will be some impact from trade agreements and there will inevitably be changes to legislation, at least eventually. Now is the time to carry out risk assessments, to derive an action plan and timeline, and talk to customers and suppliers.

Simon presented an overall timeline for the whole Brexit process.

First there will be a 3 to 6 month period of clarification, and this of course will include election of new leaders for both our major political parties, the appointment of a new prime minister and doubtless the shaping of a new government. At that point article 50 will be triggered. This leads to the two year negotiation process. This will be a dominant activity which means in the next 2 to 5 years there will be inactivity on almost all other issues. In the next 3 to 7 years surplus legislation will be removed but it will take 3 to 15 years to plug gaps, to accommodate new trade agreements and finally recover from the break. Simon's message was that nobody should put their head in the sand - an awful lot is going to go on.

The webinar closed with a range of questions. For example does there need to be an act of Parliament to trigger article 50? Answer, no, the referendum result is sufficient to authorise the government to take that action.

The UK tends to follow the EU baseline on a number of regulations. With the absence of this baseline will legislation be watered down in order to stimulate growth? Certainly this is a possibility.

What important EU environmental legislation is expected to come out in the next 3 to 4 years? 

The circular economy is extremely important because it cuts across so many areas. The EU model will no longer apply to the UK. There is an absence of policy from the UK government here, especially with regard to waste management, as they have relied on the EU to lead. Will we be able to redefine waste in the UK in future? Yes, but if these materials are to be transferred to the EU they will not be acceptable unless they comply with EU legislation.

Will consultation still go ahead on the European environmental impact assessment directive? We'll still need to comply until the end of our membership.

Will Brexit cause delays to the Paris agreement? Probably not. The UK is an independent signatory as well as part of the EU. It's exit will have little effect.

Nick Blyth, IEMA Policy & Practice Lead, brought up the question of ESOS - Energy Saving Opportunity Scheme - and CRC - Carbon Reduction Commitment. Both of these are out for consultation this summer and it remains to be seen whether DECC will hold this timetable. ESOS after all is a mechanism to implement a European directive,. Will this still be the government’s approach?

How will Brexit affect UK as an entry point to the EU? Anything exported from the UK to the EU will have to comply with EU regulations as now. The only difference is that we will no longer have any say in framing those regulations.

What about the habitats and birds regulations? Will they be removed from UK legislation because of pressure from housebuilders? There may be some softening of the regulations, but in general EU legislation will continue to apply at least for the next two or three years. There will be no wholesale destruction of legislation in any field following Brexit. Legislators will be preoccupied with negotiating and implementing the U.K.'s exit.

What about the industrial emissions directive? Again, there is unlikely to be any change for two or three years. The present European standard states that the best available technique should be employed to reduce emissions. It is difficult to believe that the UK government would move away from this.

At the close of the webinar Josh thanked speaker Simon Colvin from Weightmans and said that there were still 500 listeners logged to the webinar. The Institute’s publication, The environmentalist, is available online with more information on all the points discussed.

Some people have suggested that now that we have voted to leave it's no longer necessary to carry out environmental impact assessments. This is certainly not the case. Compliance with the existing regulations will continue to be required until those regulations are replaced with something else which could be years hence. In any case, legal compliance is not only the reason for respecting our regulations. There is a moral and an economic reason as well.

As I said, the whole of this webinar is available online. It runs to just over an hour and you can find it at www.iema.net/event–Reports   

I'm sure this will be only the first of many discussions.

And Finally...SBPMg...

Well, before I go and sign off for the summer, what else is going on? Not the Sustainable Best Practice Mastermind group. The meeting scheduled for next Thursday, 7 July has been postponed indefinitely. I've had a lot of support and enthusiastic feedback from sustainability professionals. The problem appears to be that while business owners and chief executives will pay for mastermind groups for themselves they will not pay for similar activities for their senior professionals. Sometimes they even grudge them the time. My suggestion is that if you would like to work together with fellow professionals and we are talking here about a mastermind group, not a conference or workshop but a regular event when you work with and get to know similar people. If you have a spare conference room why not invite colleagues to meet on a regular basis? I have spoken to a large number of people in relation to SBPMg. I cannot share their contact details for obvious reasons but you are all encouraged to join the SBPMg LinkedIn group and I hope that you will be able to find people that that you can work with to increase the sum of knowledge and the fund of best practice. I wish you the very best of luck with it. https://www.linkedin.com/groups/8551313 

Right. I'm signing off now until September. On 2nd September we still won't have a new prime minister, we presumably will not have initiated article 50 and things will very much be in limbo. 

I'm not really happy about the future. We are going to devote our best brains in the civil service and in Parliament to negotiating our exit from the EU. All that effort will go on for 2, 3, 4, 5 or more years. None of that skill and expertise will be available to work on education and schools, on health care and hospitals, on transport, poverty, defence, social justice and all the other important things which should be the government’s first priority. Somebody in my local newspaper said that this would be Britain's finest hour because we always perform best with our backs to the wall. I don't think we needed to put our backs to the wall. I don't think we needed to shoot ourselves in the foot. 

Maybe everything will all have changed by September. If it does I sincerely hope it's changed for the better. 

Have a great summer. This is Anthony Day and for the moment that was the Sustainable Futures Report

The next episode will be available on Friday, 2 September.