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April 2009 Archives

April 20, 2009 - Sustainability on the political agenda

This is going to be one hell of a week. Big announcement on industrial policy from DECC today, followed by the Budget on Wednesday. And despite the fact that most of the discussion will – understandably – be focussed on the state of the public finances, budget cuts and projected rates of growth and unemployment, the whole sustainability agenda is hanging in there and may even be rising in significance. Not least because the Tories are back into “proactive mode” on sustainability issues. Last week, the Shadow Chancellor George Osborne laid down his marker as to what a Green Budget would need to look like to create any kind of real forward momentum. The ten main action points (some of which bear an uncanny resemblance to some of the principle recommendations in the SDC’s advice to Government on building a low-carbon, sustainable economy!) cover a wide range of energy efficiency, renewable energy, green technology and transportation ideas – and if any Chancellor really did deliver all of that in one fell Budget swoop, it would indeed represent a serious step change.

With one massive caveat: not one of the £30 billion identified as the level of investment required would (according to George Osborne) by a taxpayers’ pound. So the totality of the funding required for a new high-speed rail link (circa £5 billion) will come from the private sector, and the totality of the £20 billion required to retro-fit 1 million homes a year over the next 10 years (at £6500 a house) will be liberated through a new mechanism to recoup the cost of the improvements made through a charge on future fuel bills. To be honest, that strikes me as privatised pie-in-the-sky.

That said, it’s great to have the Tories mixing it with Labour on this particular territory – and the Lib Dems have also got a thing or two to say.

As to what Mandelson and Darling come out with this week, watch this space.

Read the Sustainable Development Commission’s advice to Government on how to bring about a sustainable economic recovery package that has the environment and sustainable development firmly at its heart and could create around 800,000 new jobs.
www.sd-commission.org.uk/publications/downloads/SND_booklet_w.pdf

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on April 20, 2009 2:59 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 21, 2009 - Government and the low carbon economy

The response to Peter Mandelson’s rather obvious point that Government is going to have to take a more hands-on role in shaping a low-carbon industrial strategy has been extraordinary.

As if this marked some ideological reversion to old Labour at its command-and-control worst back in the 1970s!

Work it out, guys. In the shortest possible period of time, we’ve got to move from an economy almost totally dependent on fossil fuels to one in which fossil fuels will be bit-part players in the energy mix. A 34% reduction in CO2 by 2020 (which the Government will announce as its interim target tomorrow) is just a taste of things to come.

Which makes the debate about market-led or regulation-led interventions all but irrelevant. Markets only work when governments shape those markets to ensure the desired objectives – in this case, an ultra low-carbon economy. “Getting a realistic price on every tonne of CO2 “, to use Nick Stern’s phraseology, is of course a market mechanism – but getting us to that realistic price as fast as possible will be driven by governments not by markets left to their own devices.

On which point, cracking good piece by Nick Stern in the Times today, laying down the law for Alistair Darling in terms of tomorrow's budget. Any new coal-fired power stations to have “carbon capture and storage” mandated by government as a condition of planning; government to re-think the third runway at Heathrow if the Committee on Climate Change indicates it can’t be done within the new carbon budgets; clear government leadership on efficiency and renewables, and a clear commitment to use public expenditure to help drive the new low-carbon industrial strategy. A lot of public expenditure: up to 1.5% of GDP.

Part of which seemed to be what Peter Mandelson was saying about the need for a new kind of “low-carbon industrial activism”. However, I’m not sure he’s quite got Nick Stern’s equally powerful message about avoiding “lock-in” in terms of big, clunky, carbon-intensive infrastructure and investments.

But perhaps we’ll hear more about all that tomorrow.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on April 21, 2009 2:44 PM | | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

April 22, 2009 - Transport and the budget

I skimmed the newspapers this morning to pick up on any unexpected ‘green vibes’ around the Budget. Every indication is that there isn’t going to be any big “New Deal” brought forward, as part of a larger recovery package, although lots of ‘green lollypops’ will no doubt be there in the shop window.

And almost certainly a number of them will cover transport. A £5,000 subsidy for purchasers of electric cars has been widely flagged plus a few tens of millions to subsidise charging points. Hopefully, we’ll also see some details around the Government’s earlier commitment to promote electric vehicles through the Low Carbon Vehicles Procurement programme.

On the whole, this would be a good thing. The Committee on Climate Change has been very clear in its advice to government that the wholesale electrification of transport (apart from aviation!) is a precondition of meeting our long term targets on CO2 and other greenhouse gases. A lot depends on where that electricity will come from, but its good to see at least one little government toe in the water.

And then there’s the whole debate about a possible scrappage scheme – with motorists getting up to £2000 to hand in their old cars and buy new ones. The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders has been lobbying ferociously to get this through, simply as a support mechanism for hard-pressed car companies. (Car sales in March were down 30% on last year). They argue it has worked in January in terms of new car sales, so why shouldn’t it work here?

It might. But there will be zero sustainability benefits arising from such a scheme even if it does. Even if people buy slightly ‘greener’ models, there will still be very high emissions arising because of all the CO2 embedded in the manufacture of those cars. So the cost per tonne per CO2 saved is very high.

Environmentalists have argued that a much better use of taxpayer’s money would be for the Government to support the establishment of low-carbon car clubs – reducing congestion, reducing emissions, and reducing costs for those motorists smart enough to realise they can get almost all the benefits they want from the use of a car, without the hassle of actually owning one.

All of this will be a big test of Darling’s “seriousness of intent”, helping move transport policy just a little bit further down the road to its inevitable low-carbon destination.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on April 22, 2009 1:44 PM | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

April 23, 2009 - The budget - green vs sustainable

There’s a world of difference between a “Green Budget” and a “Budget for Sustainability”.

On the “green front”, it could have been a lot worse, but it could have been better too. (See yesterday’s press release from the Sustainable Development Commission below). Not exactly the mega-recovery package that has been called for but not insignificant either: £525 million for offshore wind; £435 million for additional energy efficiency measures; £405 million for green technologies; encouragement for CHP; and new support for carbon capture and storage – with more details on this coming from Ed Miliband today. And all of that backed up by the new Carbon Budget – with a target of a 34% reduction in greenhouse gases by 2020.

The papers today have good coverage of this. On the broader sustainability front, however, there’s been much less coverage. But both the new 50p rate of income tax and the projected levels of debt have highly significant sustainability implications.

Fairer taxes (I would argue) are a critical part of any sustainable economy. All the evidence shows that more equitable societies (i.e. with lower levels of income disparities) are more contented societies. The data on this has been compellingly brought together in a new book called “The Spirit Level”, which makes the case that almost all the worst socio-economic problems in society today can be traced back to chronic poverty. So, being very obvious about it, better-off people should pay higher taxes – and that’s as much a part of a sustainable society as very low carbon.

On the debt front, the bottom line couldn’t be clearer. We have indeed been living way beyond our means; levels of public debts are going to have to rise dramatically to bail us out of that mess; it will take many, many years before our public finances are back in balance – and the pain of that will be spread over the next generation of tax payers as well as this one.

Not good from the perspective of intergenerational justice that lies at the heart of the concept of sustainable development.


Sustainable Development Commission PRESS RELEASE:

BUDGET FOCUS ON LOW CARBON TECHNOLOGY AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY TO BE WELCOMED – BUT MUST BE PART OF LONG-TERM STRATEGY

The Sustainable Development Commission welcomed the Budget announcement of £495million of additional funding for low carbon technologies and energy efficiency over the next two years, and called for this to be part of a committed, long-term strategy to facilitate the transition to a low-carbon economy.
But the Commission questioned the announcement of a £2,000 discount on new cars for motorists scrapping cars over 10 years old, arguing that under such a scheme, the cost per tonne of CO2 saved is very high. It also criticised the fact that no emissions requirements are attached to new vehicles.
Jonathon Porritt, Chair of the Sustainable Development Commission, said:
“The transition to a low-carbon economy is the most urgent challenge facing the government – both economically and environmentally; and achieving this calls for a long-term commitment. While we welcome the investment announced in today’s Budget, this spending ceases two years from now, and its scale not going to put us on track to achieving the extremely ambitious targets of the Climate Change Act and its associated carbon budgets.”
The scale of green spending announced today falls far short of the £30bn a year for the next three years called for by the Sustainable Development Commission in its recent Sustainable New Deal. The report argued that only a commitment on this scale can ensure a globally-competitive, low carbon future for the UK. It argued that more than 50% of such a package would generate significant financial returns within two to three years, and could create at least 800,000 jobs.
Jonathon Porritt said:
“An investment strategy of the kind we have called for would create appropriate incentives for both the private and public sector, and would demonstrate the kind of unequivocal leadership that UK citizens are now ready for.”

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on April 23, 2009 12:37 PM | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

April 24, 2009 - UK is right to trial carbon capture

Whatever you may feel about Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS), at least we now know where we are here in the UK. Ed Miliband’s statement to Parliament yesterday announced three things:

1. that the Government has signalled its support for up to four
demonstration plants, of up to 300 Mega Watts each, at about a billion pounds each;

2. that these will be paid for via a levy on our energy bills, amounting to around 2% on the average bill;

3. that, assuming the technology is demonstrated to work, CCS would
have to be retrofitted to any coal-powered power station approved from this moment on. This would be mandatory.

As the Energy and Climate Change Secretary put it, “the era of new, unabated coal has come to an end”.

After years of dickering around, coming up with one half-baked proposal after another, to the growing fury of those companies most closely involved, the Government has now nailed its CCS colours (or most of them) to the mast.

That won’t reassure those who hate the very idea of CCS any more than the dickering around did. And their arguments are strong: these are not completely proven technologies; it’s a very costly way of abating CO2 in comparison to investment in both energy efficiency and renewables; it’s a very energy-intensive process; there are many unresolved liability issues, and so on.

They’re largely right – but still wrong, despite that, to oppose the full-scale trialling of CCS to see what the real strengths and weaknesses are in practice. The reality is that the implications of having to get to an 80% cut in greenhouse gases by 2050 are unforgiving. Globally, countries like China, India and even the US (with very high dependence on very large coal reserves) just can’t do what they have to do without CCS, and CCS could be making a big difference in that respect just ten years or so from today - far quicker than nuclear power.

That doesn’t necessarily make it right for the UK, but it does make it a big potential market for UK engineering.

I can’t say I feel much enthusiasm for CCS. Its arrival will be testament to humankind’s utter folly in ignoring the build-up of greenhouse gases over the last twenty years, and a signal of desperate policy measures still to come. The imminent climate crisis means that there are a lot of things we’re going to have to do that we won’t be very keen on. Which makes it right for Ed Miliband to get this particular ball rolling.

Click here for the full statement.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on April 24, 2009 12:10 PM | | Comments (9) | TrackBacks (0)

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