A Transition take on the UK ‘Low Carbon Transition Plan’

Conclusion

…………….Overall, I think this is as bold and brave a plan as could be expected given the circumstances under which it was no doubt written.  Here is a government approaching an election, having been in charge during a spectacular economic unravelling, with Milliband having to fit within and keep on board a Cabinet obsessed with economic growth (the Mandelson/Brown effect).  The brief set for it was to create a low carbon economy in the context of economic growth, in complete contradiction to all the indications to the contrary.  I think Milliband is a dynamic young politician who wanted to do something very far-reaching here, but he has had to do so in a very difficult context.  Within the context of what he can actually do, I think it is very good.  In terms of being a plan that will enable and underpin this country’s inevitable energy descent and relocalisation, it is inadequate.

Praise where it’s due; on the positive side, the Plan takes many decisive steps forward and puts mechanisms in place to ensure that the various Government departments actually carry them through.  It is nothing if not ambitious, although its starting assumptions are such that it is designing for a world that will almost certainly not be possible.  However, it is, of course, the victim of a degree of inevitable compromises (especially in the farming area) which hamper the effectiveness of such a wide ranging proposal.  I do think that as a plan produced by government it is as good as we are likely to get, indeed some parts of it are much better than one might have expected.

From my perspective, it throws the challenge back to Transition groups and others.  The Government has set out an unprecedented dedication to the low carbon agenda, and thrown considerable weight behind it.  The role of communities is seen as being vital, and encouraged, but the ball is in our court. We often say communities can’t do this on their own, they need Government working to support the low carbon agenda.  Now they have gone some way towards that.  What is missing from this Plan is the local detail, the stuff that central Government can’t do;  the locally owned energy companies, the local food networks, the groundswell of desire for change, what Jeremy Leggett calls the ’scaleable microcosms of hope’.  This is what Transition can do, and I feel, having read this report, and having heard Milliband’s endorsements of the Transition Network, that the door to real and deep change feels significantly more open than it did last week.

Full article at http://transitionculture.org/2009/07/17/a-transition-take-on-the-uk-low-carbon-transition-plan/

 

Sustainability and the ‘energy gap’

The article below, echoes my article of 2005, ‘Sustainability and the Energy Gap’ where I predict that a ‘perfect storm’ of factors will ensure that the western economies will end up with with a lower quality of life than an equitable distribution of resources would allow.

This is simply because will will not recognise the immutability of the One Planet Equation.

Read Article sustainability-and-the-energy-gap2005

dd

Green Shoots, an Alternative View

Kurt Cobb

……………..That’s what my green shoots are telling me. Let me repeat it again: We may be nearing the point where the existing capital stock including the public infrastructure has grown so large and our resources, both financial and physical, have become so tight that we can no longer both maintain and expand the capital stock simultaneously. This does not necessarily lead to a dramatic collapse so much as a grinding decline in productive capacity. Over time the economy has more and more difficulty extracting basic resources from the Earth, manufacturing objects from those resources, and transporting those objects to markets, all while maintaining the buildings related to these activities……….

See complete article at http://resourceinsights.blogspot.com/2009/06/green-shoots-alternative-view.html

 See also

http://trailblazerbusinessfutures.wordpress.com/2008/12/14/sustainability-and-the-energy-gap-2/

http://trailblazerbusinessfutures.wordpress.com/2009/01/30/the-virtuous-circle-and-reductionism/

 

How many light bulbs does it take to change a man?

 David McKay’s book has been  highlighted on this Blog before  and the video at the link below makes an excellent contribution to the debate on the conundrum we face.

Unfortunately, the video, being short gives the impression that the problem is how we expand supply to meet demand. However, the real question is how do we reduce the ‘resource intensity of society’ to match, realistically available supply.

Another unfortunate aspect of the light bulb analogy is that it gives the impression that the use and waste of energy is in ‘things’, when in reality much is wasted in how we organise  these things to run the society we have.

The gains obtainable by this ‘effective’ use of energy are probably an order or two in magnitude greater than making ‘things’ more ‘efficient’.

The critical test of this fact is being made in the UK Parliament at the moment, where the lack of understanding of the risks and possible costs of external failure has created pressure for ‘change’.

However, the pressure is to change the system to make it more efficient not more effective, which can only be achieved by asking ‘what are we here for’  – to which the answer can only be “we are here to improve the ‘quality of life’ of UK citizens by reducing the resource intensity of the goods and services they consume per unit of consumption per capita.

Arguments about preserving democracy etc., in a society constrained by the ‘first law of sustainabilty’, are unsustainable in themselves and will only lead to its loss in the not too distant future.

What we have to create is a proactive process of government that ‘protects its citizens freedoms as far as possible in such a resource constrained world’, whist working to enable the continual reduction in the resource intensity of the goods and services that they create, consume and dispose of.

dd

Prof. David MacKay’s book, “Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air”, has been published, and it’s an instant success. Now there’s a video, a radio interview, a Guardian editorial singing his praises … and a bafflingly inscrutable criticism from the Sustainable Development Commission.

More information and a video can be seen at http://lightbucket.wordpress.com/2009/05/13/david-mackay-energy-star/

 

A disagreement about how to save the world

  Here lies our dilemma, both authors below are right, we have to find more renewable goods and services, but we have to realize that, individually and collectively we have to reduce our resource intensity to live within the bounds of the ‘one planet equation’ and the ‘first law of sustainability’.

dd

http://oneplanetequation.wordpress.com/one-planet-equation/

A disagreement about how to save the world–Part II

Complete article and comments at http://noimpactman.typepad.com/blog/2008/01/god-bless-you-i.html

The other week, I got in a goodhearted little email tiff with Michael Shellenberger, who as you know if you read this blog, is a co-author of Break Through: The Death of Environmentalism and the Politics of Possibility. Our email dialog turned out to be really interesting.

In the first part exchange (which you can read here on No Impact Man or hereon Michael’s blog), Michael adamantly asserts that reducing our individual and cultural environmental footprints in the way I’ve done in the No Impact Man project are much less important than investment in the development of sustainable materials and energy. Below is my reply to this first shot across my bow.

God bless you, Michael, if you’re optimistic enough to think industry will change fast enough. God bless you too if you think we can recycle enough materials to put three TVs in every Indian and Chinese household and a car in every garage. God bless you if you think that will make people happy. God bless you, too, if you think just one approach will do the trick. ……………………

 

Was Einstein Right?

 

  

Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. 

 

Ye Cannot See the Wood for Trees.’

  In John Heywood’s ‘A dialogue Conteynyng the Nomber in Effect of all the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue.’ He wrote ‘Plentie is no deinte, ye see not your owne ease. I see, ye can not see the wood for trees.’ http://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/16/messages/630.html

 The final two paragraphs below from a far longer anaylsis on The Oil Drum is worth investigation but we seem to have gotten ourselves into a position where, as John Heywood said ” We can’t see the wood for the trees”

Most current analysis is apocalyptic and all solutions proffered, trival, and although no easy answers will be found here, the reality will.  The reality that unless we solve the ‘One Planet Equation’ so that it includes the essential needs of all human society, the Earth will solve it dispassionately for us.

The Media, politicians and books such as ‘7 years to save the planet’  speak endlessly about the symptoms but nothing about the need to liberate the ingenuity to create the skills and knowledge required to enable the, wished for, low or zero carbon future. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Seven-Years-Save-Planet-Questions/dp/0297853368

Our failure in this respect is evidenced in Professor Hedley Beare’s book ‘Creating the Future School’, where he states ” Increasingly radical changes are expected due to advances in Information Technology in post-industrial economies and through globalisation” http://www.amazon.co.uk/Creating-Future-School-Outcomes-Education/dp/0415238692

The concept of a post-industrial society is a fallacy that can only be sustained within a limited range of products and services. The reality is that societies that lose the industrious ability to create, maintain and extend their infrastructure from within are doomed to wither and decay at best, and collapse at worst, in fulfilment of the comments below.

dd

Financial Forecast for 2009, Considering Resource Limitations

Posted by Gail the Actuary on January 6, 2009 – 10:10am

…………………….Many people have started making preparation for the time when food needs to be produced locally and electricity is often not available. I would not discourage such preparations. While we do not know that the economy will collapse completely, I think such preparations are prudent, in the face of rising risk. Preparation for a major change takes many years, so starting earlier rather than later makes sense. Also, with the tower of debt (Figure 1) and the many feedback loops, the downward spiral can happen more quickly than our prior experience suggests is possible.

To solve our current financial problems, I expect that the United States (and other countries) will ultimately need a new financial system that is much less debt based. Such a system might start simply as ration coupons for food and energy products, and gradually be expanded to replace our current monetary system. Debt forgiveness and derivative write downs will also probably need to be part of the solution, but with the caveat that debt forgiveness and derivative write downs can be expected to have just as adverse an effect on the balance sheets of financial institutions as outright defaults. In conclusion, 2009 looks like to be a very challenging year for the new administration and for the world as a whole.

 http://www.theoildrum.com/node/4915

 

The Resource Intensity of Water Services

 As always, it is important to recognise the difference between efficiency and effectiveness. No matter how much we can improve the ‘efficiency’ of water services as they exist in, say, the UK, they would not represent an ‘effective’ use of water service resources in India. See Sunita Narain’s foreword in The Worldwatch Institutes ‘2006 State of the World’ in which Gandhi is also quoted as saying

“If it took Britain the rape of half the world to be where it is now, how many worlds would India need?”

dd

Water efficiency organisation launched

17 December 2008 A global organisation promoting resource efficiency of water has been launched with partners from civil society, academia, multilateral organisations and business.

The Water Footprint Network, which aims to encourage the transition to equitable and sustainable water use around the world, was launched earlier this week.

Among its founding members are conservation group WWF and the University of Twente, while the Nature Conservancy and Unilever PLC are among its first partners.

The organisation will set standards for footprint accounting and reduce the negative impact individuals, organisations and business’ water footprints have on people and the environment.

Professor Arjen Hoekstra, the network’s scientific director, said: “The concept of Water Footprint has really helped to create the understanding that human impacts on freshwater systems can ultimately be linked to human consumption.

“Issues like local water shortages and pollution are now better understood and addressed by considering production and supply chains as a whole. Local water depletion and pollution are often closely tied to the global trade of water-intensive goods.”

The network reports that 16,000 litres of water are used in the production of one kilogram of beef and 140 litres go into the production of a single cup of coffee.

http://www.waterfootprint.org/?page=files/home

http://www.lowcarboneconomy.com/community_content/_low_carbon_news/3704/water_efficiency_organisation_launched

 

Bye Bye Standby

From SmallBizPod http://www.smallbizpod.co.uk/blog/2008/12/01/micro-manage-your-electricity-use/ 

Bye Bye Standby is one of the companies that has made a bit of a name for itself recently for its home appliances. They are radio-controlled and each has a ‘channel’ associated with it. A central device can switch off all equipment associated with a particular channel.

Last month the company launched its professional range for businesses and it estimates that it will save “in excess of £50 per individual per year”. I guess that means office worker, but the system will work with more than just power sockets. Versions can be wired in-line to electrical feeds and also directly into appliances such as lights and air-conditioning units.

Importantly, these devices meter electricity usage and send readings the BBS Energy Manager software which gives a business detailed information about energy usage and CO2 emissions. The software can also switch equipment off. At night, for example.

 http://www.byebyestandby.co.uk/business/

Key benefits

• Cut your energy costs by up to £45 per employee per year
• Detailed reports showing how much each department, building or area costs to run
• Drill down information about what each employee is costing you in energy use
• Fully automated shutdown of PCs at night and at the weekend
• Automatically turns off vending machines, photocopiers and other office equipment when it is not required
• Manual override systems fitted as standard for those early morning starts
• Cost effective – begins to pay for itself in as little as 3 months with a typical ROI of less than 2 years and Government assistance is available for almost all organisations.
• Full installation and support services available including grant and state aid guidance

 

Digital Photo Frames – Service or Waste?

In the drive to reduce the resource intensity of products and services, are digital photo frames the evil they might at first seem?

In effect they can be seen as reducing the resource intensity of many processes to zero in the delivery of the service of viewing captured images, conveniently and at low energy intensity. (a presence detector might be a useful addition?)

dd

 

China’s Growth Collapses to 7.5%!

Putting this ’staggering collapse’ in growth into context, at 7.5% China’s consumption of goods and services would double in just over 9 years and putting this in the OPE 1=P*C*I results in a required reduction in resource intensity by 2050 from at this time of 1.15*1.075 to the power 42 = 24. this a big improvement over the 63 of 10% growth but assumes we have not exceeded resource and sink constraints already, which many would argue we have. Based on UN98 Medium Varient Population Growth Rate Scenario

From Reuters http://www.reuters.com/article/newsOne/idUSTRE4AL2C720081125

LONDON (Reuters) – Recession in Germany and a slowdown in China painted a bleak economic picture on Tuesday, a backdrop which top miner BHP Billiton cited in abandoning a mega-bid for Rio Tinto.

Wary of the effects of the worst financial crisis in 80 years, BHP Billiton called off its $66 billion hostile bid for rival Rio, catching markets off their guard.

“We have concerns about the continued deterioration of near-term global economic conditions, the lack of any certainty as to the time it will take for conditions to improve and the risks that these issues imply for shareholder value,” BHP Chairman Don Argus said in a statement.

China, the world’s biggest consumer of many metals, this month unveiled a 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion) spending package to prop up its economy, but growth would still likely slow to around 7.5 percent in 2009, the World Bank said.

That could be China’s slowest growth rate since 1990.