Friday, September 06, 2019

Fired Up!




Fired Up!

Yes I'm back. I'm Anthony Day. This is the Sustainable Futures Report for Friday, 6 September. Autumn already. Time to face new challenges.


Green, but increasingly red.
That was a comment a while ago posted about the Sustainable Futures Report. The correspondent was concerned that I was straying into politics. The truth is that everything is political. While we can all do something towards solving the climate crisis it is only governments and politicians who can make the changes of a magnitude that will make a difference. We are talking about system change, after all.
I know that many of you listening to the Sustainable Futures Report are not in the UK. I think that even you will have noticed that UK politics are in some turmoil at the moment. In fact this has been going on for three years but is finally approaching a denouement. I say finally, but everything may well have changed by the time you hear this.
Political Climate
Anyway, the latest situation is that our new prime minister has sought and received the authority of the Queen to prorogue or suspend Parliament. Of course she couldn't refuse, but that's another story. The point at issue is that this will allow the Prime Minister to govern without parliament, and allow him to complete Brexit – the U.K.'s departure from the EU – as he chooses. I happen to believe that leaving the EU would be a disaster, but I'm more concerned that if this Prime Minister can sideline parliament then any Prime Minister can do it on any issue. That's the reason I spent Tuesday in London with York for Europe and the York Remain Voice Choir. I hope you saw us - and heard us - on the evening news, on BBC, ITV and Channel 4.
Brexit is a sideshow by comparison with the climate crisis. While Brexit dominates UK politics, little of significance will be done on climate change or on the many other issues that have been neglected over the last three years. Worrying also is the fact that many prominent Brexiteers are vociferous climate deniers. If I’m being political in opposing them, then so be it.
This Week
In the climate crisis news this week: the Amazon fires, why they’re not the only fires, why they may not be as bad as you think and why they may be much more serious in ways you don’t expect. The future for the consumer society. Prof Sir Ian Boyd, retiring chief scientific advisor at Defra, has set out his thoughts, which look very much like system change to me. And the flying prince. Are carbon offsets making his travel carbon neutral?
Fire! Fire!
The fires in the Amazon have been making big news over the last couple of weeks. They are destroying the rainforests aren't they? They are threatening an area which produces 20% of the world’s oxygen, aren’t they? The Amazon rainforest is the lungs of the Earth, isn’t it? Well, and yes and no. I strongly recommend that you listen to More or Less, a statistics programme on BBC Radio 4 which is available online and has carried out a detailed analysis of the situation. They spoke to Daniel Nepstad of the Earth Innovation Institute, who explained that the fires that have been identified by satellites are not burning rainforest. Generally the rainforest doesn’t burn, because it’s so damp and humid. What can happen is that low-level fires can burn the leaf litter on the forest floor and this can scorch the trunks of the trees and kill them off. These fires are not visible from space and their effects are only evident once the trees have died off, which may take a year or more. The first point, then, is that the fires may be more extensive than we know at present.
Now you see it…
The fires that we can see from space are occurring on land which has been cleared. It's common practice for farmers to burn off weeds. Where land has been recently cleared the trees are left to dry out and then are burnt. One of the major consequences of these fires is smoke and soot in the atmosphere, leading millions of people to seek treatment for respiratory diseases. Smoke from the fires caused São Paulo – which is more than a thousand miles away from the Amazon – to be “plunged into an apocalyptic darkness” on 19 August. The new president of Brazil, Jair Bolsonaro, has taken a very hard line on the Amazon, weakening the Brazilian environment ministry and turning a blind eye to illegal logging and deforestation. He sees the Amazon as a resource to be exploited by miners, farmers and loggers. As I reported recently, when the Brazilian satellite monitoring agency revealed significant increases in the rate of deforestation the president denied that it was true and the director of the agency was dismissed.
What’s the Truth?
Does the Amazon produce 20% of the world’s oxygen? It depends how you calculate it, but according to Daniel Nepstad it consumes a lot as well and the net effect is more or less neutral. He sees the most important function of the forest as its cooling effect. As every drop of water transpired by the trees evaporates it cools the atmosphere. The effect of this across the whole forest is enough to have an effect on the climate of the whole world.
Support the Locals
Let’s not forget the consequences of the fires and the deforestation policies for the indigenous peoples of the Amazon basin. They see their homes, their food sources, their way of life destroyed. Tribes that have been at war for generations are coming together against a common enemy. Surely the global community should take their part, in our own interests as well as theirs. 
President Bolsonaro initially suggested that NGOs had deliberately set the forests on fire in order to embarrass his government. He rejected the $22m that politicians attending the recent G7 summit in Biarritz pledged to help fight the fires. Can the world afford to stand by and let this destruction continue?
Meanwhile in Africa…
It’s claimed that attention to the Amazon leads the world to overlook the fact that there are far more fires in Africa. But it’s not the same thing. Writing in Quartz Africa, Colin Beale, Senior Lecturer in Ecology, University of York, says: 
“Fire is an essential part of the savannah The first thing to know is that the impact of a wildfire depends more on where and what it is burning, than on how big it is, or indeed how many fires there are.
The vast majority of the African fires currently burning seem to be in grasslands, in exactly the places we expect to see fires at this time of year. These fires are usually lit by cattle farmers as part of their traditional management of the savannahs where their animals graze. Some fires are started to stimulate new growth of nutritious grass for their animals, others are used to control the numbers of parasitic ticks or manage the growth of thorny scrub.
Without fires, many savannahs (and the animals they support) wouldn’t exist, and lighting them is a key management activity in many of the iconic protected areas of Africa. For instance the Serengeti in Tanzania is known worldwide for its safari animals and awe-inspiring wildebeest migration – and our work shows that around half of its grasslands burn each year."
…and in the Arctic
Most fires both in the Amazon and in Africa therefore are deliberately started by humans as part of land management. BBC News reports that wildfires are ravaging parts of the Arctic, with areas of Siberia, Alaska, Greenland and Canada engulfed in flames and smoke.
Satellite images show how the plumes of smoke from the fires, many caused by dry storms in hot weather, can be seen from space.
While wildfires are common at this time of year, record-breaking summer temperatures and strong winds have made this year's fires particularly bad.
They are now at "unprecedented levels", says Mark Parrington, a wildfires expert at the Copernicus Atmosphere Monitoring Service (Cams).
Gargantuan forest fires in Siberia, which burned for more than three months, created a cloud of soot and ash as large as the countries that make up the entire European Union. More than four million hectares of Siberian taiga forest went up in flames, the Russian military were deployed, people across the region were choked by the smoke, and the cloud spread to Alaska and beyond. Fires have also raged in the boreal forests of Greenland, Alaska and Canada.
No Surprises
Though images of blazing infernos in the Arctic Circle might be shocking to many, they come as little surprise to Philip Higuera, a fire ecologist at the University of Montana, in the US, who has been studying blazes in the Arctic for more than 20 years. “I’m not surprised – these are all the things we have been predicting for decades,” he says.
You can see satellite pictures of wildfires in Canada on the Business Insider website. Link on the blog.
Closer to home, about 1,000 holidaymakers had to evacuate resorts in Gran Canaria this week to escape wildfires. Last month, campers had to abandon their tents due to a fast-spreading blaze in southern France during a heatwave.
In the UK, the Fire Brigades Union says there have been 10% more callouts this year, which has overstretched emergency resources.
The Flying Prince 
Last time I shared my interview with you when Mike Graham of Talk Radio wanted to talk about the Royals and how Elton John had lent them a private jet but paid for offsets to make the flight carbon neutral. Mike Graham raised a number of questions which I couldn't answer, but I've done some research since.
Let’s look first at what carbon offsets are. When a plane burns fuel one of the byproducts is CO2, which as we know is a greenhouse gas. The logic of offsets is that if you pay for something which absorbs an equivalent amount of CO2 to the CO2 emitted by your flight then your flight is carbon neutral. The most common offset is planting trees, because as trees grow they absorb CO2 and lock it up until the tree is finally cut down and burnt or allowed to rot.
Carbon Footprint
The organisation which Elton John used, https://www.carbonfootprint.com,  promotes other projects as well. For example, they bring fresh water to remote communities in the third world. This means that the people no longer have to boil the water before drinking it so they don't have to light fires to boil the water: fires which would emit carbon dioxide. They also provide these communities with more efficient cooking stoves, producing lower emissions.
Validating the Schemes
“How do we know that this money is actually spent on the these projects?” asked Mike Graham. The projects in this particular case meet the Verified Carbon Standard administered by a non-profit organisation called Verra based in Washington DC. They say:
“Verra is committed to helping reduce emissions, improve livelihoods and protect natural resources across the private and public sectors. We support climate action and sustainable development with standards, tools and programs that credibly, transparently and robustly assess environmental and social impacts and enable funding for sustaining and scaling up these benefits. We work in any arena where we see a need for clear standards, a role for market-based mechanisms and an opportunity to achieve environmental and social good.”  
What’s the Problem?
So far, so good but there are many problems.
How are flight emissions calculated?
In detail, taking into account the known fuel consumption of aircraft used on the chosen route, the number of landings and take-offs on long-haul journeys and the number of passengers on board. Business Class and First Class passengers are assumed to have a greater carbon footprint as they take up more space per person. This gives basic CO2 emissions, but some claim that radiative forcing should be taken into account. What’s that? Radiative forcing is the effect of all the other emissions that aircraft make, together with contrails. These also have a warming effect, and to take this into account the basic footprint should be multiplied by something between 1.7 and 2.2 times.
How is CO2 valued?
Each offset programme will have its own calculation. It will assess how much CO2 each project will absorb, estimate how much the project will cost to run and from this calculate a cost per tonne, including the overall cost of running the schemes. Costs per tonne vary widely between projects even within the same scheme.
How quickly will emissions be offset?
This is a key problem. Your flight may be over within 24 hours but it can take a tree 30 years to absorb an equivalent amount of carbon. That tree needs to survive for 100 years, because CO2 emitted by a flight will remain in the atmosphere for at least that time.
So can the prince’s flights be carbon neutral?
In a word, no. ‘Offsetting is worse than doing nothing,’ according to Manchester university professor Kevin Anderson. In fact he says it “almost certainly contributes to a net increase in the absolute rate of global emissions growth.” He’s concerned that there can be no guarantees that projects will be maintained for the 100 years needed to ensure that they are effective. If people believe that offsetting makes flights carbon neutral they will fly more without thinking about it. There will be more carbon emissions. There will be more global warming.
Some schemes have failed in a very short time, so travellers’ good intentions have more or less gone up in smoke. Some schemes would have happened anyway, so offsets have not added anything to global CO2 reduction. 
Writing in ProPublica, environmental journalist Lisa Song echoed Kevin Anderson’s view. She reviewed carbon offset projects around the globe. She found that they hadn’t offset the emissions they were supposed to, or they had brought gains that were quickly reversed – or that couldn’t be accurately measured to begin with. ‘Ultimately, the polluters got a guilt-free pass to keep emitting CO₂, but the forest preservation that was supposed to balance the ledger either never came or didn’t last,’ she concluded.

No-fly zone
The message is clear. Whether you’re a prince - or a pauper - the responsible thing to do is not to fly.

System Change
Until last month Sir Ian Boyd was Chief Scientific Adviser at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and is a professor of biology at the University of St Andrews. In an interview with BBC News he explained his views on how people need to radically change how they live, using less transport, fashion, materials, and consuming fewer “luxury” foods like red meat, in order for the UK to meet its target to halt greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. Sir Ian suggested that the UK was in a good position to show the world how to achieve Net Zero, but argued that persuasive political leadership was needed to carry the public through the challenge.
He said the public had little idea of the scale of the challenge from the so-called Net Zero emissions target, and that the conundrum facing the UK - and elsewhere - was how we shift ourselves away from consuming.
Asked whether Boris Johnson would deliver that leadership, he declined to comment,  but Johnson has already been accused by environmentalists of talking up electric cars whilst planning a cut in fuel taxes that would increase emissions and undermine the electric car market.
More tax
Sir Ian said polluting activities should incur more tax. He believes the Treasury should reform taxation policy to reward people with low-carbon lifestyles and nudge heavy consumers into more frugal patterns of behaviour.
Emissions won't be reduced to Net Zero while ministers are fixed on economic growth measured by GDP, instead of other measures such as environmental security and a relatively stable climate, he argued.
All good ideas, but probably not very electorally popular. Probably not understood by most of the UK electorate. We’re going to have an election in the UK soon, but it’s likely to be a single-issue election with profound consequences for the country and irrelevant to the climate crisis of our time.
And finally…
This must be true because I read it in the paper. It's well known that in America they use more energy for air-conditioning in the summer than for heating in the winter. A visiting Brit found her office in New York far too cold and asked the facilities manager if anything could be done. “Sure thing, m’am” he said, and brought her an electric heater.
And that's it for another week…
Thank you for listening. I'm Anthony Day and that was the Sustainable Futures Report for Friday the sixth of September. Thank you as always to my loyal patrons who contribute to the costs of bringing this podcast to you. It will always be free, and there is no advertising, sponsorship or subsidy. Find out more at www.patreon.com/sfr

There will be another episode next week, quite an important one. It'll be published on Friday the 13th.
Until then enjoy everything you're doing. (As long as you’re not flying)
Bye for now.


Sources
















Posted by at No comments:

Friday, August 23, 2019

Where's the Beef?



Where’s the Beef?
Right, just in case you're on holiday and wondering what to do to fill the time here's another episode of the Sustainable Futures Report and this one is for Friday, 23 August.
What’s going on?
Yes I'm Anthony Day and I'm continuing to share my thoughts on sustainability and I'm delighted to see that so many of you, indeed more than ever, are listening to this podcast. I mentioned last time that Julia Hartley Brewer of Talk Radio wanted to know what I thought about the decision of Goldsmith College to ban beef. 
I recorded the interview and created this episode and congratulated myself on getting it all set up and ready to roll a whole four days in advance. And then Talk Radio rang me again, (Isn’t it time they gave me my own programme?) and asked if I’d talk to Mike Graham about Elton John flying Harry and family by private jet and whether paying to offset the carbon footprint was just hypocrisy. I recorded that one too. I’ve recovered and re-jigged my original episode, so now you get two for the price of one.
Anyway, here’s how the first interview went. Just remember, to err is human.
Interview Number One


Julia Hartley-Brewer: Right, let's turn our attention back here to Goldsmith College in the University of London. From next month they've said they're going to remove all beef products from their shops and cafes and from the canteen -- no burgers, no lasagna, no chili, no tacos -- all taken off the menu. Why? Well, because they're banning beef as part of efforts to tackle climate change. They're also going to charge students a levy of 10p on bottles of water and single use plastic cups, it's all part of a drive for the university to become carbon neutral by 2025. They're going to install solar panels and switch to a clean energy supplier. Also, they're going to require all academic courses to include studies on climate change. Professor Frances Corner, the Warden of Goldsmiths says, declaring a climate emergency cannot be empty words.

Well, is it actually going to achieve anything? Let's talk to Anthony Day, who's an environmental consultant and host of "The Sustainable Futures Report," which is a podcast on environmental issues. Good morning to you Anthony.

Anthony: Good morning.

Interviewer: Good morning. I mean, my first advice to anyone reading this would be if you are planning to go to Goldsmiths, is change to another university and go somewhere sensible. But I do worry there aren't that many other sensible universities. You, however I imagine are very concerned with these issues. You think this is all a good move?

Anthony: Well, I think it's a good thing to raise awareness of the climate crisis. I don't think actually banning beef is going to make a big change on the world scale. But I think that raising the profile is good. I think there's more they could do, of course.

Interviewer: -- often talk about raising profile and this is what the Extinction Rebellion people... And as far as I can tell what they're doing is basically everything Extinction Rebellion has been calling for them to do without any questions.

But they always talk about we need to raise the profile. Good Lord. The world talks about with, well, the world, the western world, the western media talks about nothing but climate change. I can't see you can go half an hour watching the BBC or Sky News or read a national newspaper without being talked to, certainly Radio 4, about climate change with this ongoing, it's almost like a religious cult, talking about the need to do something. I mean, who isn't aware of it yet?

Anthony: Well perhaps not many people. But it's not a question of talking about it, it's doing something. And unfortunately the talk so far hasn't actually led to sufficient action.

Interviewer: But you say that, but in Britain, we know that Britain of all the G20 countries has done more to tackle carbon emissions, has done more to tackle waste, more to do about recycling. There are loads of things that the British government has done not apart from this nonsense zero-net emissions target for 2050, which is obviously slightly less worse than what Extinction Rebellion want. But there's no doubt at all we're moving to renewable energies, no doubt at all there've been loads of efforts to tackle...

When you say nothing's being done, it's not just talk, on the contrary, loads has been done. We pay huge taxes right now on our fuel. We have to pay to buy a plastic bag. There are loads of things being done in terms of action to stop us from adding to carbon emissions.

Anthony: Not nearly enough. Not nearly enough. As you say, the 2050 zero net emissions target is nonsense. It should be much earlier.

Interviewer: Ah I think it's nonsense because I think it's too soon. You think it's nonsense for the other reason.

Anthony: Absolutely, it should be 2030 or even earlier. But we are in a crisis and playing about with plastic bags and beef burgers isn't really going to solve it.

Interviewer: But this is what we do. As you say, it's playing around. And I'm all for let's not have a load of plastic bags thrown into the oceans. And yeah, to be fair, it would appear that we... Life can go on without us all having single use plastic water bottles. But what would you want done then? What do you think say Goldsmiths can do or the government can do, every company, people listening right now should be doing, rather than taking their bag for life to the supermarket? What should they be doing?

Anthony: Well, one of the major things the government can do is an insulation project for the whole of all the houses, all the homes in the country, so that we could cut back by 50% or more the cost of heating. So we can get rid of fuel poverty, we can create jobs as we go through that project of insulating every home. We would cut down on the amount of energy we're using. So obviously that saves every consumer money. That cuts down our carbon footprint. So that's one thing we can do.

At Goldsmiths College I think they ought to insulate all their buildings in the same way. They should discourage staff and students from coming by car. And in fact they could discourage travel altogether by doing more online distance learning courses.

Interviewer: Ah, so basically, yes almost stop existing I would think.

Anthony: No, no, no, no. Just exist in a different way.

Interviewer: Oh yes, but no, come on. Actually being in a university is very very different, isn't it, in terms of as opposed to doing your work online.

Thank you very much. Absolutely fascinating to talk to you. Anthony Day's an environment consultant. He's hosted "The Sustainable Futures Report," that's a podcast on environmental issues. Thank you very much for that.

And then, a couple of days later they wanted me to talk to Mike Graham about flying royalty and whether paying to offset the carbon foot print of the flight was hypocritical. You’ll see that he’s set me some homework.
Interview Number Two
Sorry, no transcript for this section. He was criticising Elton John for flying the royals to his holiday home and then paying for offsets. Mike Graham suggested that offsets were a con because nobody knew where the money went. I’d checked out the organisation that Elton used and identified the projects that the money was spent on. Graham raised more questions:
  • Who checks up on these schemes?
  • How is a tonne of carbon valued?
  • How much does it cost to plant a tree?
I didn’t have an answer to any of these, but agreed to do some research and get back to him. Watch this space.

And that’s it…
Well what was going to be a very brief episode turns out to be a bumper edition. I think I deserve some time off. I’ll be back in September.
Thanks for being a listener and even more thanks if you're patron. I had an online discussion with a number of patrons a few weeks ago and I'm planning another one shortly. If you’d like to take part please let me know. And if you're not already a patron you can find out the full details at patreon.com/sfr. 

Yes, that's it. I'm Anthony Day, that was the Sustainable Futures Report and there'll be another one very soon.

Posted by at No comments:

Friday, August 16, 2019

Away with All Cars?



Away with All Cars?
Welcome once again to the Sustainable Futures Report.
This is the episode for Friday the 16th of August and I’m Anthony Day. We’re shaping up for another record month for downloads, so thank you you for listening and if you like the Sustainable Futures Report please tell your friends. If you don’t, please tell me. And if you really like it, why not become one of the growing number of patrons who help me cover my costs? Go to patreon.com/sfr for more information. You could receive a unique Sustainable Futures Report enamel badge. Apart from that there’s no advertising, sponsorship or subsidy behind the Sustainable Futures Report.
This week
I didn't buy a car this week - not even an electric. The Commonwealth research organisation suggests the age of the car is coming to an end. How will that work? I didn't eat red meat this week which is just as well because both George Monbiot and Mark Lynas say I shouldn't. But what does the IPCC tell us? Can the four-day week or the four-hour-day become a reality? And I don’t know about straws in the wind, but there are still far too many straws in landfill at the moment.
Another week.
No New Car
We had a test drive in another electric car. It was the Hyundai ioniq. It was very nice, very smooth, with all the latest safety features like lane departure warning, adaptive cruise control and the things you take for granted these days like air-con, sat-nav and digital audio. It was nearly silent, emissions-free of course and very comfortable. I wanted it. I could afford it. But did I need it? 
“What can I do now to make you buy today? asked the sales manager. “Nothing,” I replied. We'd already agreed, my wife and I, that having kept the present car for 14 years we were not going to make a snap decision. “We’ll make a decision by the end of the week,” I said. That was Wednesday and by  the following Wednesday the salesman still hadn’t bothered to follow up. I didn’t phone him. The thing is, as much as I’d like a new car, especially an electric one, like the average car in Europe it will sit unused for 95% of the time. I’ve got better things to do with £25,000 than that. We already have two cars, which dates from the time when my wife and I were both doing contract work at opposite ends of the United Kingdom. We now have the electric Smart car and my 14-year-old Toyota Prius for longer journeys. Given that the Prius runs like it did when it was new and according to the salesman it’s only worth £750 doesn’t it make sense to keep it indefinitely?
Electric Jaguar
We heard that Jaguar has announced that it's going to retool its production line to manufacture electric cars. Is this really the future? Its current electric car, the Jaguar iPace, starts at £64,000 so it's not for everyone. Are we all going to sit in electric powered traffic jams instead of petrol ones? Isn't it time to think hard about what cars are for, about why we are making journeys and whether cars are the best way of meeting our transport requirements? We need to decarbonise and to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 says the government. We're not going to achieve that by restricting the sales of fossil fuels cars from 2040. On average many of those cars will still be on the road in 2050. In fact 2050 is almost certainly far too late for zero carbon, and while electrifying the transport fleet would go a long way towards zero carbon it's not practical for a number of reasons.
32m EVs in 10 years
There are 32 million cars in the UK. If we wanted to replace the fleet with electric cars by 2030 we would have to register one new electric vehicle every 10 seconds from now on. We’d have to scrap a car every 10 seconds as well. We currently register a new car every 13 seconds, but will there be enough electric cars?
And then there are the practicalities of owning an electric car, and the main one is charging. Just assuming we can generate enough electricity to power the nation’s fleet, and that it will be green electricity, the difficulty is getting that power into the cars given that a very high proportion of them are parked in the street.
Wireless charging
It's being reported that's the British government is looking at the installation of a wireless charging system working by magnetic induction. A consortium led by Renault has developed a stretch of road to test the technology’s capability. The 100-metre test track was said to be capable of a charge up to 20 kilowatts at speeds up to, and in excess of, 62 miles per hour (100kmh). At that speed the car will pass over the charger in just 3.6 seconds, and any charge received must be negligible. Let’s suppose then that the car travels at 50kph and the charger is extended to 2.5km. The car would take 180 seconds or 3 minutes to pass over it and could pick up 1kWh from a 20kW charger, assuming perfect efficiency. Depending on the model, that would be enough to drive the car for about 8km, less the 2.5km driven during the charging process. Not much! And if 20 cars drive along this charging route and all use it at the same time the total load is going to be 400kW. In slow or stationery traffic the load will be significantly higher because more cars can fit into the charging space. I’ve heard, and please let me know if you know better, that wireless charging is only about 60% efficient. That may not be a problem when you’re just charging your phone, but if you’re charging the UK’s transport fleet that way it could involve a vast waste of energy.
On Rails
I’ve reported in the past about a system in Sweden which uses rails set in the road, and the car receives a charge through pick-ups which contact the rails directly. Apparently they retract if you swing out to overtake something. Clever! Direct contact is likely to be more efficient than wireless charging, but I wonder how it works in the wet, and whether it’s totally safe for cyclists and pedestrians.
Superchargers
BMW and other manufacturers are taking a different approach. They are developing the IONITY network, which has 100 charging stations across Europe delivering up to 350kW. At that rate a car can be recharged in under 10 minutes. If you can recharge that quickly you don’t need a charger in the street outside your house any more than you need a filling station next door for your petrol car. There are two problems with this, at least in the UK. One is that there is only one IONITY station in the UK at the moment. The other is that there are no cars currently available which are capable of receiving a charge at 350kW. When they arrive, an important question will be how well the batteries stand up to repeated high-power charging.
Infrastructure
Of course, to deliver this level of power to the charging stations will require industrial levels of electricity supply. Whether the chosen solution is induction, rails or superchargers there will be significant investment needed in infrastructure between the power station and the point of use. Events this week when a million people lost power across the UK and several London rail terminals were closed down for the rest of the day showed that the infrastructure is not as resilient as we might like, even at current levels of demand.
Shifting the Focus - Energy Demand
‘Shifting the focus: energy demand in a net-zero carbon UK’, was published by the Centre for Research into Energy Demand Solutions (CREDS) – an organisation made up of more than 80 academics across the UK.
They say:
“UK policy with respect to energy demand tends to focus on the benefits of lower carbon emissions and lower bills for energy users, often using the latter as an argument for minimal intervention. Reduced demand, improved energy efficiency, greater flexibility and decarbonised fuels have a much wider range of benefits, notably for health and employment. Addressing energy demand is generally more likely to promote sustainable development than increasing energy supply. As importantly, recognising all the benefits is more likely to motivate action. We recommend that all the benefits of demand-side solutions are considered in developing and promoting policy.”
They continue:
“…policy instruments that were well-designed and effective have been modified, or much reduced in scale. This has significantly reduced the effectiveness of UK energy policy. We recommend greater consistency in demand side policymaking and, in particular, scaling up policies that have been shown to work.”
That’s telling you.
The authors emphasise that a transformation in the way that energy is used needs to be led by Government, but cannot be delivered by Government alone. All stakeholders need to be involved. 
Chilling News from Asda
Today’s newspaper has an article about supermarket Asda which has come to an agreement with National Grid to switch off its freezers and chillers at times of peak demand in order to reduce the load on the network. It’s headlined as a “giant battery” but of course it’s not that at all. It doesn’t feed anything into the grid, it just stops taking it out at agreed times. The difference is expected to be 13MW, and if Tesco did a similar deal that could apparently add as much as another 50MW. I’m amazed that deals like this weren’t thought of long ago.
On your (e-) bike
Going back to the CREDS report, Cycling Weekly is delighted to see that the authors recommend bicycles,  electric bicycles and e-scooters, but The Bicycle Association, backed up with research from consultancy Transport for Quality of Life, goes further. It shows that the cost of saving a kilogram of CO2 via schemes to boost e-bikes is less than half the cost of existing grants for electric cars – and at a cost per purchase of less than one tenth of the grant for electric cars.
The Bicycle Association believes that e-bikes should be a top priority for urgent Government support, saying that half of all e-bike trips replace journeys that would have otherwise been made by car.
It also points out that e-bikes don’t require infrastructure changes such as electric charging points, though it has been shown that improved provision such as segregated bicycles lanes does increase cycling volume.
CREDS is sceptical of the government’s ULEV (Ultra Low Emission Vehicle) standards as for the moment they still favour hybrids. In fact, throughout the report CREDS is concerned with inconsistencies between government policy, ministerial strategy and Committee for Climate Change recommendations.
Do we need cars?
But do we need cars? One way to cut energy demand is to use fewer cars. In fact graphs in the report show that car use is declining in all age groups, except the over sixties. The availability of public transport and dedicated cycle-ways are essential to getting people out of their cars. Or maybe we need cars but we don’t need to own them. 
The Age of the Robotaxi….
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla, is reported as saying that he will have a fleet of one million robotaxis on the road in 2020. That’s next year. Why own a car if you can dial one up on your phone and you don’t have the cost of a driver? Sounds too good to be true. 
…Or not?
Geoffrey James writing in Inc. magazine certainly thinks it is too good to be true. He quotes rival manufacturers as saying that such autonomy is at least 10 years off. He reminds us that aircraft have been using autopilot for years, the skies are far less crowded than the average street and yet every aircraft has a human pilot. Musk’s claim is apparently based on technology. All self-driving cars use LIDAR  - Light Detection and Ranging - with cameras mounted on the car. Tesla may or may not use LIDAR, I don’t know, but the difference is big data. Cameras on every one of the cars shipped by Tesla have been feeding back data to Tesla HQ since the very first car was delivered. Tesla therefore has a data archive superior to anything any of its competitors might have on which to build its self-drive software.
So will we see a million robotaxis next year? Tesla is currently producing cars at the rate of about 350,000 per year. It’s difficult to see where that million will come from.
Changing the system
Commonwealth.co.uk is a research organisation which seems to be exploring the type of system change which XR is seeking. (I have no idea whether these organisations are connected.) Commonwealth’s new report, “Away with all cars” is pretty clear about its conclusions. 
They say:
“Unless we radically decarbonise our transport system, we cannot build a just post-carbon society. But rapid decarbonisation won't be achieved without re-imagining how we move and connect. The future will be different.”
“To get onto an emissions pathway consistent with our commitments under the Paris Agreement, it is estimated that the UK will need to see a reduction in overall traffic volumes of between 20% and 60% by 2030, depending on how fast we can switch to EVs. [18] That is a lot of traffic to lose. Yet the DfT’s Road to Zero strategy[19] for decarbonising transport contains no measures to reduce traffic growth. Instead, the government projects that traffic will increase by up to 50% by 2050[20], and plans to spend £30bn of public money between 2020-2025 on road building to facilitate this[21] Car traffic is known to expand to fill whatever space is given to it[22]; the DfT’s own assessments show that these schemes ultimately worsen traffic jams, rather than alleviating them.”[23] 
The report is strongly focused on London, although it draws conclusions for the wider UK.
It says:
“…London is [also] the only region of the UK with a long term trend of declining traffic. There are two underlying reasons for this. First, London receives far higher per capita spending on transport infrastructure than any other region. Second, London’s public transport system remains under democratic ownership and control via its transport authority, Transport for London (TfL). 
“When bus services were deregulated in the rest of England in the 1980s, London was unique in retaining its ability to strategically plan and manage bus routes and fares, deciding when, where and how frequently to run the services. Since then, bus use in the capital has risen by 52% while it has declined in other English cities by 40%. TfL mandates that a single bus fare in London today costs £1.50. In Manchester, there are 47 competing private bus companies, and a single fare in some of the most disadvantaged areas can cost £4.40.” 
The study points out that as long as private cars are permitted in London there will be congestion, with delays to buses, emergency vehicles and everybody else. At least until every vehicle is electric, air quality will remain dangerously poor. 
A view from 2030
Commonwealth paints a scenario for 2030 where cars are all but eliminated from London. People can walk or use free buses. There will be a small charge for a much extended tram network or for the underground. Taxis will be widely available, as will e-bikes and e-scooters. There will be ride-sharing buses and auto-rickshaws. School buses will take the kids to school and then take people from the suburbs into town. There will be cleaner air, safe streets for cycling and some of the 50km2 currently used for carparks - some of the most expensive real estate in the world - will be converted into leisure parks and community areas. And then it can all be rolled out to the provinces. Interesting ideas and I recommend you read the full report which is only 3 or 4 pages. Find it via the blog.
Of course whether it will ever happen depends on government action. I leave you to make up your own mind on whether the present UK government has the foresight, desire or competence to carry out such a project.
Why travel?
One question we haven’t addressed is why people travel. Quite a lot of travel is commuting, but aren’t we warned that AI is going to take our jobs away? Not everyone can work from home, of course, but some organisations are promoting a 4-day working week and a best-selling book in the US suggests a 4-hour working week is possible. (It isn’t.) Even so, car use is declining among most age groups and will decline rapidly if the public transport infrastructure described above covers the whole country.
For the moment though, the car industry seems to be relying on business as usual and the government is planning for road traffic to increase by 50% by 2050.
The Meat of the Matter
One thing that can't be ignored is the IPCC Special Report published this week on Climate Change and Land.
They say:
“Land provides the principal basis for human livelihoods and well-being including the supply of food, freshwater and multiple other ecosystem services, as well as biodiversity. Human use directly affects more than 70% (likely 69-76%) of the global, ice- free land surface (high confidence). Land also plays an important role in the climate system.” 
Diversification in the food system (e.g., implementation of integrated production systems, broad-based genetic resources, and diets) can reduce risks from climate change. Balanced diets, featuring plant-based foods, such as those based on coarse grains, legumes, fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, and animal-sourced food produced in resilient, sustainable and low-GHG emission systems, present major opportunities for adaptation and mitigation while generating significant co-benefits in terms of human health. 
…options include better grazing land management, improved manure management, higher-quality feed, and use of breeds and genetic improvement. Different farming and pastoral systems can achieve reductions in the emissions intensity of livestock products. 
Headlines
The report has led to a host of headlines mostly about food, although it actually covers a much wider range of issues.
“In exhorting us not to eat meat, green preachers place morality over reason” - says the Telegraph. Charles Moore correctly points out that the report does not suggest that we should all go vegetarian or vegan, so he is criticising those who say we should. 
Both the journal Nature “Eat less meat: UN climate-change report calls for change to human diet” and Time magazine, “How Eating Less Meat Could Help Protect the Planet From Climate Change” get the point, but the Financial Express says, “Turning vegetarian could help fight global warming.”
Expert views
Two well-respected environmental writers - probably the people Charles Moore is complaining about in TheTelegraph - roundly criticise the IPCC.
“The planet is being consumed by humans,” says Mark Lynas.
“Humanity is on a collision course with nature. Already 72% of the global ice-free land surface is dedicated to supporting our species, and between a quarter and a third of the entire 'net primary production' of the planet is consumed by humans.
“Because we grab so much for ourselves, smaller and smaller amounts are left in the food chain for the rest of life on Earth.
“The majority of the world's land is used not to feed humans directly but to support livestock. Over-consumption of meat is unhealthy, and also an environmental disaster: rainforests are cleared in Brazil both to provide pasture for beef cattle, but also to grow soya crops for export to markets like Europe where they are mostly used in animal feed.
“A largely vegetarian -- or better still, vegan -- planet would be able to dramatically reduce agriculture, sparing more land for nature.
“All is not yet lost, but getting to a better future will mean letting go of some of our most cherished habits and myths. Are we ready to do this? The answer will be on the plate in front of you when you next sit down to eat.”
Further…
George Monbiot goes further. “We can’t keep eating as we are – why isn’t the IPCC shouting this from the rooftops?” he asks.
He goes on,
“It’s a tragic missed opportunity. The new report on land by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) shies away from the big issues and fails to properly represent the science. As a result, it gives us few clues about how we might survive the century. Has it been nobbled? Was the fear of taking on the farming industry – alongside the oil and coal companies whose paid shills have attacked it so fiercely – too much to bear? At the moment, I have no idea. But what the panel has produced is pathetic.”
The IPCC explains that around 23% of the planet-heating gases we currently produce comes from agriculture. But Monbiot complains that this overlooks opportunity costs. If we were not using the land for agriculture, he says, this land would be absorbing 9 tonnes of co2 per person eating a traditional Western diet per year.
“If we want to prevent both climate and ecological catastrophes, the key task is to minimise the amount of land we use to feed ourselves, while changing the way the remaining land is farmed. Instead, governments almost everywhere pour public money into planetary destruction.” 
Butter mountains and wine lakes
He’s referring there to the butter mountains and wine lakes that used to exist in the EU, and the millions of pounds promised to farmers by the British government to compensate them for disruptions caused by Brexit.
I’ve been told that the true answer is regenerative farming, a balanced mix of livestock and arable. If that’s what’s meant by “extensive farming” then George Monbiot is against it. 
I need to do more research on regenerative agriculture and will bring it to you in a future episode. If I find that both Mark Lynas and George Monbiot are against it, it could be hard to make the case.
Where’s the beef?
Meanwhile, Goldsmith College in London has announced its intention to become carbon neutral. It's putting a 10p levy on plastic bottles, installing solar panels, buying clean energy, growing plants to absorb CO2 on its allotments and making sure that the climate emergency is covered in every course. Oh, and it's banning beef. No burgers, no roast beef sandwiches, no lasagna and no meatballs in the campus cafes. I was asked about this by Julia Hartley-Brewer on Talk Radio. I get the impression that she is not only a Brexiteer but a climate sceptic as well. I'll publish the recording of the interview separately, and you can decide how I got on.

And finally…
I saw a sign in a shop window the other day: “It’s only one straw, said 7 billion people.” Then I saw a headline in the paper: “MacDonalds defends its ‘un-recyclable’ paper straws".
An industry insider comments, 
"Yes, from our experience of finding an alternative to plastic straws it feels inevitable that a story like this was going to break at some point.  Unsurprising also is that it is the biggest brand imaginable in this space who take the flak, but the truth is likely to be that McDonald's will be far from being alone.  Indeed, with the difficulty of truly measuring the impact of any given product or service, let alone that the impacts may be very different and not directly comparable (e.g. plastic in the ocean vs carbon footprint), we've not found any straw which is measurably better than the incumbent plastics.  So, our focus has been to reduce usage.
We're also waiting for the media to realise that almost all cardboard packaging in the food industry suffers from the same problem of not being recyclable anywhere other than incredibly specialist providers- from fish and chip paper and pizza boxes which are oil stained by the food, to plastic-lined and chemically-treated cardboards.”
And that’s it…
I think I’ve said before that there’s nothing simple in sustainability. All too many silver bullets seem to ricochet in unexpected if not dangerous directions. None the less, I’m not going to keep my head down. I will continue to bring you stories about what’s going wrong, what’s going right and what the future might look like.  And there are so many more stories out there as well. By the way, I came across the video of a presentation that I did only four years ago. Some of it was dead right and is very much the message that I’m promoting now. You’ll be amused to see what was dead wrong. I’ll publish it for you to enjoy over August Bank Holiday. (Well, it might be raining.)
I’m Anthony Day.
And that’s it for the latest edition of the Sustainable Futures Report. 


Sources




Tesla

Electric cars 'will not solve transport problem,' report warns






No 10 hands Jaguar Land Rover £500m loan to develop electric cars

We can’t keep eating as we are – why isn’t the IPCC shouting this from the rooftops?











Notes

2.4m registered in 2018 = 1 every 13 seconds, given 31,536,000 seconds in a year

Owned for 8 years on average. 

7,800 miles pa on average = 1750kWh

56,000GWh or 56 Twh

6.5 GW 24/7

Electric cars 'will not solve transport problem,' report warns



Posted by at No comments:
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)