Honda’s withdrawal from the hugely expensive world of Formula 1 motor racing is another illustration of the pressures on the world’s car-makers. Now might be a good time for reflection. Does it make sense to use the petrol engine as the power source for the cars on the track. Isn’t it time to switch to electric cars?
Read MoreMost major countries in Europe have decided to focus on one or two technologies to reduce carbon emissions. By making concentrated investments in one or two promising areas these countries are likely to achieve substantial cost reductions and rapid increases in deployment. By contrast, the UK is dabbling ineffectually in several areas and achieving little. Despite having large resources of renewable energy sources, the UK’s effort is diffuse, trivial in scope and clearly insufficient. We have almost the lowest percentage of our energy coming from low-carbon sources in the EU.
Read MoreThe funnel of water between the north-east tip of Scotland and the Orkney Islands contains some of the most powerful tidal energy in the world. The exploitable resource at the time of the fastest running tides may be as much 8 gigawatts. One source I have talked to suggests the figure could even be as high as 20 gigawatts. As I write this note, the National Grid’s website gives an estimate of the electricity use at this moment – about 55 gigawatts at peak-time on a winter evening. Be in no doubt, the Pentland Firth is the single most important source of renewable energy in the UK. The power concentrated in this narrow stretch of water could comfortably provide London’s electricity need. And it is entirely predictable to within a few percent every minute of every day. The tidal power will peak twice every 24 hours in a cycle that the Grid will be able to plan for decades in advance.
Read MoreAlok Jha of the Guardian wrote about Air New Zealand’s trial of jet fuel based on jatropha berries. This note looks at the percentage of the world’s land area that would have to be devoted to the crop in order to provide for the total needs of aviation, an industry that uses about 5% of the world’s oil.
Read MoreWe seem to know less about methane emissions than we thought. After a decade of stability, methane concentrations in the atmosphere have been rising strongly in the last 18 months. Early research work suggested that this rise was concentrated in the northern latitudes of the northern hemisphere and was consistent with greater emissions from decaying organic matter in melting permafrost or from the melting of Arctic sea ice. Now this result has been called into question by the publication of a new study showing the concentrations of methane are rising almost everywhere. Since methane takes some time to diffuse around the globe, the later work suggests that the rise in methane may not be directly due to enhanced emissions from biological sources.
Read MoreI’ve just been lucky enough to see Gordon Brown’s notes for a speech he will give in a few weeks time at the Walter Mitty Institute. It may be worth sharing some of his thoughts.
Read MoreAs with other great popular causes, such as improving access to public libraries, reducing the use of plastic bags, and the protection of urban hedgehogs, everybody is in favour of ‘feed-in tariffs’ for renewable energy. Widely used in other parts of Europe, these tariffs guarantee a high price for every unit of electricity exported to the grid from very small generating stations. Put some solar panels on your roof in Germany and you get paid 40p for every kilowatt hour that you produce and don’t use yourself.
Read MoreTogether.com, the climate change campaigning organisation, has launched a new product for its annual campaign. It is promoting the traditional door ‘snake’ in its autumn publicity drive. Filled with insulating material, these colourful sausages stop heat leaving a warm room in winter through the gap at the bottom of the door. As part of the campaign, B&Q is selling snake-making kits for £1 on 20 October. National Trust properties are holding snake-making workshops over the half-term period.
Read MoreThe easier of Adair Turner’s two main challenges is deciding how to save the entire UK banking system in his role as chairman of the FSA. As head of the Climate Change Committee, the more difficult job is persuading the government that it needs to take substantial action over greenhouse gases.
Read MoreFor once, the government has got its climate change policies right. The idea of a windfall tax on energy suppliers has widespread support. One hundred or so Labour MPs have come out in favour. Caroline Lucas, the newly elected leader of the Greens, has advocated such a policy and many Conservatives express private approval. The trade unions were infuriated by Alistair Darling’s refusal to back the proposal. Rather than backing a windfall tax, it looks like he favours plans that oblige the utilities to improve the energy efficiency of customers’ homes.
Read MoreCommunity-owned wind farms are a rarity in the UK, despite their popularity in other parts of northern Europe. So should we welcome an opportunity for individual investors to invest in a newly built wind project in northern Scotland? Yes and no. The prospectus promises reasonable returns. But the protections to investors are limited and the information about the mechanism by which shareholders get their returns is sadly lacking. Even enthusiasts for individual investments in wind power need to be very cautious about investing in the Great Glen Energy Co-operative.
Read MoreElizabeth Kolbert looked at the Swiss 2,000-Watt Society project in the /New Yorker/ of 7 July. Her interviewees provided estimates of the energy use of the typical Swiss inhabitant. The figures added up to about 5,000 watts. To be clear, this means each person is responsible for about five kilowatts of continuous energy use. This includes home electricity and gas, personal transport, industry, and office. To keep us in the ease and comfort we have got used to we are consuming, directly and indirectly, enough energy to keep two electric kettles boiling continuously, or driving a fuel-efficient car four hours in every day. This article looks at the composition of energy demand in the UK. The figures are then broken down by sector and by fuel. The numbers are used in the introduction to /Ten Technologies to Save the Planet/ (Profile Books, November 2008), where I try to assess whether we are likely to be able to use technology to reduce fossil fuel demand substantially.
Read MoreThe world has decided that much of the blame for the rising cost of foods can be ascribed to the use of grains for biofuels. The case for the prosecution is simply made. About one hundred million tonnes of maize from this year’s US crop will be diverted into ethanol refineries, an increase of a third on 2007’s figure. The maize used for ethanol represents almost 5% of global production of all types of grain. One in twenty cereal grains produced in the world this year will end up in the petrol tank of US cars. Other countries are also pushing ethanol, but the US has moved most aggressively to increase the use of food for fuel.
Read MoreShell backed out of its commitment to provide the financing for one third of the world’s largest offshore wind farm off the Kent coast. The London Array, expected to cost about £2bn, now needs to find a new investor. What about tapping the public? The project has reasonable economics, and private individuals could benefit from 40% tax relief by putting shareholdings into pension plans. Perhaps as importantly, such a move would raise understanding of renewable energy generation among the wider community.
Read MoreNigel Lawson and others are suggesting that temperatures have ‘stabilised’ since the late nineties. 1998 saw the highest global average temperature and only 2005 has closely matched it. Since no year since 1998 has exceeded the record, some commentators are saying the global warming has stopped. The implication, sometimes stated, sometimes not, is that the increasing rate of growth of CO2 concentration is having no effect on temperature.
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The Heartland Institute, a US free-market think tank, held a conference on climate change in New York in early March. It was a forum for some of the climate change sceptics to discuss their research. The conference got very little coverage in the media and was ignored by the science pages of the newspapers.
This seems a mistake. A large section of the population of the US and the UK, and smaller numbers elsewhere, believe that the apparent scientific consensus on global warming is a result of selective coverage by TV and press. The failure to cover presentations by some of the leading sceptics is support for the accusation that global media, and mainstream climate scientists, are refusing to engage with the dissenting views of reputable scientists who do not share the standard view.
BT announced that it was bringing out a new range of home phones with much improved energy efficiency. The claim is that ‘the new handsets boast power units designed specifically to consume around half the power of previous units’. BT said that almost all its extensive home phone range would contain the new energy-saving technology by mid-2008. Its press release gave very precise figures for the amount of CO2 saved – comparing the savings if all home phones incorporated the new technology to taking ‘57,000 cars off the road for a year’.
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| Sizewell B nuclear power station |
In the past three months, John Hutton, the UK government minister in charge of industry, has publicly backed an expansion of both nuclear and of offshore wind. Is this good for the UK’s climate targets? Possibly not.
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Two pieces of news from Tuesday 26 February. A UK investment fund is trying to raise £330m to build two large biofuels plants on the eastern coast of England. And the price of wheat rises to a new high of over $12 per US bushel in Minneapolis (over £220 per tonne) as worldwide shortages force prices ever upwards.
In most countries electricity use is rising. The increase is gradual in developed areas, averaging only 1 or 2% a year. In the UK, the pattern was similar but recent years have tended to show declining growth rates, partly perhaps as a result of increasing prices. One of the most interesting features of recent UK trends has been the flattening in electricity use in the home. This change is somewhat surprising. Improvements in home energy efficiency, through such things as the use of compact fluorescent light bulbs and high quality white goods, have usually been thought to have been outweighed by increases in the number and power use of consumer electronics. Large LCD TVs are, for example, much heavier electricity users than the old-fashioned TVs that they replace. Today’s games consoles are much more powerful than ones of five years ago.
So the reasons are not clear, but monthly year-on-year growth in domestic consumption of electricity has fallen to below zero in the last year or so. Is this a temporary change brought about by the steep increases in prices over the period 2005-6, which will be unwound when people get habituated to higher costs? Or is this a real change in household behaviour?
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