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October 10, 2007 - Tidal Power in the UK

The Sustainable Development Commission’s report about Tidal Power has been out for more than a week now, and we have just about weathered the storm from environmental NGOs – and the Environment Agency – horrified as they were that the Sustainable Development Commission could possibly have given its name to an upbeat assessment of the potential for a barrage on the Severn estuary.

I can’t really blame them. It’s been an article of faith for so long that all self-respecting greenies will, by self-definition, be opposed to a barrage on the Severn. It is, after all, a quite unique environment, and the damage that a barrage will do will indeed be severe. Birds, fish, countless invertebrates, let alone a huge expanse of mud flats, will be lost. No wonder so many people believe that it’s impossible to pursue a barrage proposal without breaching our legal obligations under the Birds and Habitats Directives. We think they are wrong on that score. With the right kind of compensatory package, that damage can be “offset”, if not absolutely in the same part of the world, then certainly elsewhere in the UK.

One NGO that was noticeably restrained in expressing its concerns at the time was The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Little did we know that they were about to announce a major new habitat restoration project at Wallasea Island on the south Essex coast. Building on a prototype project pioneered right next door by Defra, this will be one of the largest schemes of its kind in western Europe, returning arable farmland to a mosaic of mud flats, salt marshes and coastal marshland – a very special kind of habitat, 90% of which has been lost in the UK over the last century through drainage and development.

I defy you not to be inspired by this project – http://www.rspb.org.uk/reserves/guide/w/wallaseaisland/index.asp

“It will be an exciting landmark conservation and engineering project for the 21st Century on a scale never before attempted in the UK, and the largest of its type in Europe. It will demonstrate how land can be managed to help the coast and its wildlife adapt in the face of climate change and accelerated sea level rise.

The RSPB is working to transform a large area of arable farmland at Wallasea Island, in the heart of an internationally important estuary, back into coastal marshland. This will create a wetland mosaic of mudflats and saltmarshes, shallow lagoons and pastures. These will be criss-crossed by low-lying bunds along which visitors will be able to access much of this new 'Wild Coast' ".

But I couldn’t help noticing that there was no price tag attached at the moment! It will, for sure, run to many millions, and this still has to be raised. And that of course is just a fraction of the total compensation package that is likely to be required for the Severn Barrage.

Our argument on that score is a simple one. We are going to have to do many, many schemes of the Wallasea Island kind as we start to adapt to accelerating climate change. And where exactly is the money going to come from? There is just no way that loyal supporters of the RSPB are going to be able to stump up such a massive amount.

But if the bill for such compensatory packages (as we ourselves have recommended) is included right up front in the capital costs of the Severn Barrage project, we just might have one of those elusive win wins: 120 years of relatively cheap, nearly zero-carbon electricity, providing 5% of our total electricity needs, plus an adaptation strategy that really does do the job on an ecological front.

Posted on October 10, 2007 1:24 PM | | Comments (8) | TrackBacks (0)

October 26, 2007 - Good news from Wales

Excellent news from Wales. First Minister Rhodri Morgan has just announced a very creative plan to bring forward nearly 1,000 MegaWatts of new wind energy on Forestry Commission land owned by the Welsh Assembly Government.

Subject to the standard planning process, developers will be able to bid for major new wind farms on Forestry Commission land, with part of the “rental value” from the use of that land going back into community-based projects – to the tune of around £4 million a year. And part of that must be invested in schemes to reduce CO2 emissions in the local community. Efficiency plus renewables plus community benefits – spot on!

I haven’t seen the responses in the media as yet, but, for once, I hope the positive voices will outweigh the moaning minnies who still think the best way of dealing with climate change is to just carry on talking about it.

Their ranks have been strongly reinforced of late by what I call the “wouldn’t-it-be-better-brigade” – as in “wouldn’t it be better to invest in energy efficiency”, “wouldn’t it be better to put the wind farms offshore”, “wouldn’t it be better to focus on small-scale generation on our homes”, and so on. To which the answer has to be “No, No and No”: all of those things would be great in their own right, but they wouldn’t be better. People still don’t get this: we need the whole boiling lot, and then a lot more on top of that, and then a lot more on top of that.

Which is why I’m so gobsmacked by those who have piously pointed out since the SDC’s report on tidal energy that a Severn Barrage would contribute only 5% of the UK’s electricity over the next 120 years. Only 5%! Do they have any idea how hard it’s going to be to get 1%, let alone 5%?

Anyway, back to Rhodri’s wind farms. The big ones (more than 50 MegaWatts) will have to be approved by BERR, which currently seems to have lost its renewables bottle in a big way. Leaked memos, ministerial back-sliding, “if it’s not nuclear, we don’t want to know”. So fingers crossed they don’t screw it up for Wales as and when the proposals start coming through the system.

Posted on October 26, 2007 2:40 PM | | Comments (11) | TrackBacks (0)

February 21, 2008 - Renewable energy in Wales

Helped launched the new Renewable Energy Route Map for the Welsh Assembly Government yesterday – out for consultation until May, and well worth a look.

What grabs you immediately is the seriousness of intent – with an ambition to generate all the electricity Wales uses from renewable sources within the next 20 years. And may be even a bit more to export to the rest of the UK.

The Route Map is also wholly integrated with plans for massively ramping up energy efficiency targets in Wales, all part and parcel of the plan to start reducing emissions of C02 by 3% per annum from 2011 onwards.

That kind of ambition level is bound to stir a bit of controversy. It means lots of wind farms – on and offshore; it means lots of energy from waste (done in the right way, in my opinion, at a suitably small scale, rather than just opting for mega-mass-burn incinerators); it means lots of biomass and microgeneration – the contribution of which to the overall target is small, but the ‘engagement value’ of which (as in getting people in Wales personally involved) is huge. And it raises the stakes even further as regards the Severn Barrage.

Listening to Jane Davidson, the Welsh Minister responsible for all this, putting forward such exciting plans made me compare all this to the UK-wide scene. Over the last month, a number of articles in the media have show just how dreadful our performance on renewables has been since 1997 – the lowest in Europe, at 2%, after Malta and Luxembourg, despite having the best available resource. Grant schemes have largely failed, the Renewables Obligation has under-performed, planning obstacles have not been addressed, Ofgem has been semi-detached, and Ministers have just muddled along as if it never really mattered. “Pathetic” is how I described it yesterday, and pathetic is what it is.

But is that about to change? BERR will be producing a new Renewable Energy Strategy later this year, and Malcolm Wicks (who really does mind about these things, must be deeply embarrassed at where the UK is today) has indicated that it will be far-reaching and very ambitious – indeed “revolutionary” – as it will need to be to restore any kind of credibility in terms of the UK’s need to meet our new target of 15% of all energy coming from renewables by 2020.

So the Wales Route Map provides a pretty good starting point for Malcolm to be getting along with.

Posted on February 21, 2008 3:20 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

April 10, 2008 - Real Time Displays

I sometimes wonder if BERR is a Department with a death wish – the death in question being its reputation when it comes to addressing climate change, fuel poverty, energy efficiency and other key sustainability issues. There’s some kind of fundamental perversity in the way it sets about dealing with these issues that it is almost impossible to account for. Even in the small things – like smart meters and real time displays (RTDs).

In both Energy White Paper and in its Climate Change Programme Report to Parliament, the Government unambiguously pledged that it would mandate all energy supply companies to provide RTDs for electricity to any customer who asked for one. The policy was expected to result in around 2.5 million customers asking for an RTD, at a cost of around £37 million. Available evidence suggests that energy savings of between 5% to 15% could be achieved by customers who acquire an RTD, especially as these are likely to be the most energy-conscious consumers.

Indeed, the Climate Change Programme confidently identified savings of 0.2 MtC to come from “improved billing and metering by 2010”. But there’s no other policy in place to achieve this apart from the “free RTD on request” policy.

All clear so far. But this is where it starts to go wrong. BERR is now seeking to weaken the RTD commitment to one where supply companies would not be required to send consumers an RTD on request. BERR now favours a roll-out of what are known as ‘smart meters’.

Smart meters do a lot more than RTDs. They could, potentially, give suppliers or consumers a greater choice of tariffs, accurate monthly bills, and much more useful real time information for gas as well as electricity. So the Sustainable Development Commission fully supports the Government’s desire to get smart meters into all households, as a necessary step to the development of a number of carbon-saving measures.

However, there will inevitably be serious delays in putting that policy into practice (a roll-out could take up to 10 years before the majority of households received a smart meter, at a cost of several billion pounds), delays which will undermine enthusiastic customers from better understanding their energy demand.

BERR at its worst all over again. A typical lack of consistency, clarity and real leadership. So our message to BERR is a simple one: this is not an either or situation. We need RTDs now, and smart meters over the next few years. Stop taking orders from the energy supply companies by going back on your commitment to compel them to provide RTDs. Stick to your guns. Get it right – for once.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on April 10, 2008 5:34 PM | | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

May 13, 2008 - London Array

So, Shell International have decided to pull out of the London Array project, the largest offshore wind farm (at around 100MW) in the UK.

I’ve got a little file on my desk here of all the press releases that the London Array Consortium has put out over the last few years – not least to drum up support from people like me as it wrestled with a recalcitrant Local Authority and other issues in terms of securing planning permission for the facilities required for the London Array.

It’s a great scheme. It still is – with or without Shell, whose withdrawal strikes me as a terrible decision. It’s difficult to imagine how companies of this kind come to decisions of that sort.

So I was all the more grateful for a windy uplift the day after Shell announced this decision, when I went along to help celebrate the commissioning of the Westmill Wind Farm, just outside Swindon – 5 x 1.3MW turbines, which anyone now using the mainline services into or out of Paddington can observe out of the train window. If ever you need firm confirmation that wind turbines enhance certain landscapes, rather than destroy them, Westmill provides that in all its glory!

westmill_windfarm1.jpg But what makes Westmill even more special is the fact that it is a co-operative venture, with a large number of individuals (including myself) who bought into the project, and 50% of whom live within a 50 mile radius of the project.
This was a great day!

Unfortunately, there are only a handful of co-operative wind projects of this kind in the UK – in contrast, for instance, to Denmark. As far as I can discover, there are no more than 5 actually up and running, with a few more in the pipeline.

So why does that matter? Who cares whether it is small-scale, local co-operative ventures delivering the Megawatts, or vast great, overhead-heavy multi-nationals? In truth, I will settle for more and more MW of wind wherever it comes from, but I have to say that I would much rather that many more on-shore projects came from Westmill look-alikes, leaving the off-shore mega-projects to the big guys – even if Shell does seem to have lost its bottle.

And I can’t help but think that this would make a bigger difference in terms of overcoming the often utterly spurious objections of planning committees than any amount of wordy advisory notes from government.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on May 13, 2008 11:34 AM | | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

June 30, 2008 - Renewable Energy Strategy

There is a lot (mostly justifiable) cynicism out there regarding the use of targets to drive environmental improvements. In May, the think-tank Policy Exchange brought out an analysis of all the different targets set by the Government on environmental issues since 1997, and gave them a real pasting on just how far short they have fallen on so many of them.

But the implication behind the Report that any target-setting process in the field of environmental policy is largely a waste of time is entirely misplaced. Targets can drive both policy reform and improved outcomes.

And there is no bigger target out there at the moment than the EU’s target of providing 20% of all the energy it needs (not just electricity) from renewable resources by 2020. After some lively horse-trading, it was decided earlier on in the year that the UK share of that EU-wide target should be 15% - which means at least 30% (and probably close to 40%) of our electricity will need to come from renewables – it’s just so much tougher doing transport or heating by renewables.

Acceptance of this target led to months of the deepest angst inside BERR. On Thursday last week, it eventually delivered itself of a draft Renewable Energy Strategy. And it’s not half bad. Indeed, after a decade of incredibly damaging dithering, BERR Officials have at last begun to think through the reality of meeting energy security and low-carbon objectives through renewables.

Part of that new-found purpose is based on the development and deployment of the technologies themselves – particularly offshore wind, which is where we can get the biggest bang for our renewable buck. But the most encouraging thing about this draft Strategy is the recognition that making renewables work depends not so much on the technology bit as on other key aspects of energy policy, namely: energy efficiency (properly accounted for in the Strategy, for the first time since the 2003 Energy White Paper, though even now without a clear plan of action); planning (with really encouraging new emphasis on community and local benefits); grid connections (at long last, BERR is getting tough with Ofgem to get its own act sorted out on low-carbon measures); and even behaviour change – rumour has it that BERR won’t be too upset if their Lordships force the Government to give way on accepting the need for the accelerated introduction of feed-in tariffs – the single most important factor in driving the astonishing renewables success story in Germany and elsewhere.

Real breakthroughs – as Greenpeace and others have acknowledged. Still some blindingly obvious blind-spots (doing this in a way that further hammers the fuel-poor in the UK is really not smart), but without doubt the best thing to emerge from BERR over the last five years.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on June 30, 2008 1:52 PM | | Comments (5) | TrackBacks (0)

August 8, 2008 - Coal verses Nuclear

So, here are the offending words:

"I have now reached the point at which I no longer care whether or not the answer is nuclear. Let it happen – as long as its total emissions are taken into account, we know exactly how and where the waste is to be buried, how much this will cost and who will pay, and there is a legal guarantee that no civil nuclear materials will used by the military. We can no longer afford any rigid principle but one: that the harm done to people living now and in the future most be minimised by the most effective means, whatever they might be."

Source: one George Monbiot, scourge of literally all and sundry, especially of those who are perceived by him to be "betraying the cause."

Context: George is (probably even now) at the Climate Camp outside Kingsnorth in Kent, energetically supporting the campaign against E.ON's proposal to build a new coal-fired power station at Kingsnorth – with or without Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) built in.

Common ground: this is a campaign with which I am in total agreement – planning permission for E.ON at Kingsnorth would usher in a new and utterly disastrous lease of life for coal in the UK. There may be up to eight further coal-fired power stations in the pipeline. The fact that BERR would appear to be minded to go ahead with such a proposal tells you all you need to know about the Government’s head-long retreat from what we now know to have been the high point of sustainable energy thinking in the 2003 Energy White Paper.

Disagreement: as George says, a horror story. But does one’s horror at one horror story justify turning a blind eye to another – equally horrifying – horror story? "Yes", says George, because our every sinew must now be strained to combat the threat of resurgent coal. "No", say I, because a resurgent nuclear industry constitutes (almost) as grave a threat to the emergence of truly sustainable energy strategies as coal does.

I am putting the 'almost' in there to build a bridge back to George's startlingly irresponsible and throw-away 'green light' for nuclear. As you can see, he is trying to hedge that improbable endorsement with a few conditions that both he and I would agree are all but impossible for the nuclear industry to comply with.

But a communicator as astute and clever as George should (and surely does) know the difference between a 'Yes … If' position and a 'No … Unless' position.

Does all this mean an irrevocable split in the Green Movement? Yes and No. Yes, because there are indeed widely diverging views about the potential contribution that nuclear might make to a low-carbon world. No, because there always have been such diverging views, and we are all (for the most part!) united in our anger and disgust at the sheer stupidity of something like Kingsnorth.

So please do check out the Climate Camp 08 website. It's excellent.

Posted by Jonathon Porritt on August 8, 2008 10:39 AM | | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

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