Introduction
In Part 1 of this article,
I introduced the problem of climate change and the history of the
science behind it. I then went on to discuss greenhouse gases, noting
that greenhouse gas emissions are still increasing and that the need for
our intervention is very urgent, and our action needs to be immediate,
robust, and extensive. I looked at what we need to do in general terms,
so I said, “Every nation needs to introduce new legislation today, which
will ensure and encourage investment in, and development of, renewable
sources of energy, and which will expedite the installation of whatever
renewable energy plant is currently available.”
I now cover that in more detail. Where I mention
particulars, this will be for the UK, but readers from other nations
will no doubt recognize parallels with their situations in their home
countries.
What has worked very well has been government
subsidies to either help with installation costs or to lower the price
of the energy produced, in order to make it more competitive against
less desirable fossil fuel-generated power. Most fossil-fueled
generation is being heavily subsidized both in the unpaid costs to
society of the pollution it causes (also true of nuclear power), and in
government tax breaks to the fossil-fuel industry to artificially lower
the price and ensure a plentiful supply. The UK government allows around £6billion per year in such tax breaks.
Renewable energy, such as wind and solar, are
becoming cheaper and more efficient year after year, so that very little
subsidy is needed. On-shore wind is now becoming so cheap it might
eventually not need any subsidy.
Installations also need planning permission, and
though planning control is needed, the approach could be adopted of
allowing installations as much as possible. Solar and wind farms are
generally built on less productive land not required for agriculture.
Land owners could be given financial incentives for either building or
allowing such energy systems to be built on their land. Central planning
could be set up to identify suitable sites where new plants are most
needed, and to actively identify the existing players in the industry
and co-operate with them to build the energy systems there. For solar,
installations can also be added to existing infrastructure such as
railway lines and roads as well as on buildings. Even productive
agricultural land can be used for wind farms, and even for solar, where
the panels are mounted on pylons high enough to allow all normal
agricultural activity to continue underneath.
UK Government energy policies are unfathomable. It announced its 25-year green plan, and before that a ban on the sale of new internal combustion engine cars by 2040,
but both of these have no real substance. By 2040, most new vehicles
will be EVs in any case, without any grand government announcement. The
25-year plan seems mainly a way of doing nothing for 25 years, as it
contains vague aims and no measures to achieve them other than to appeal
to big business to play along, which is something they are not well
known for. That is the thin PR veneer, but what are they are actually
doing? In the UK we have energy auctions, where green-energy providers
can bid for contracts to provide subsidized energy for the National
Grid. The awarding of contracts is based on price, except that for some
perverse inexplicable reason, since 2015, onshore wind companies are not allowed to enter into the auction.
Even though their prices per megawatt hour are the cheapest thing
going, they are not being allowed to compete. Also, the government has,
firstly, tried to remove planning decisions from local authorities,
where they normally sit, in order to turn down every onshore wind-farm
proposed. Having drawn much criticism for that antidemocratic process,
they then returned these decisions to local authorities, but altered the planning laws to ensure that any vociferous “NIMBY” (not in my back yard)
person, not wanting the nice view from their home diminished by the
installation of wind generators, could block these plans quite easily.
At the same time, they corrupted the planning laws in a different way by
designating fracking installations as being “nationally significant infrastructure projects,”
so that even though local authorities and hundreds of local protesters
have been entirely against these fracking operations, the Tory
government has forced them through. As far as can be understood, the
only reason for the policy against on-shore wind farms is that the NIMBY
objectors are Tory voters in rural areas, where such rural
constituencies tend to be safe Tory parliamentary seats.
A further general blow to renewable energy has been the freezing of a carbon tax in the 2017 budget that
the government had imposed not long ago. The carbon tax added to the
overall cost of energy and increased domestic energy bills, but provided
better prices for renewable energy, allowing it to be commercially
viable. By freezing the tax, many renewable energy projects that had
relied on the price increasing have been left high and dry, causing a
shutdown of renewable energy investment. The UK government talks about
being green and having “green plans,” but does just the opposite in the
most perverse and deceitful way possible.
Solar, unlike wind, which requires large-scale
installations to be efficient, can be installed by individual households
and businesses for their own independent supply. Information,
encouragement, and plentiful cheap supplies and installation are what is
needed there. Currently there are too many commercial organizations
involved who see solar installation as yet another way of making a fast
buck at the public’s expense. Non-profit installers and suppliers need
setting up with central or local government endorsements and licensing,
in order to give the public the lowest possible costs and guaranteed
standards. At the very least, we need a licensing system for current
suppliers and installers, and a centralized information website where
people can get lists of licensed suppliers and clear comparisons for
price and service. None of this is likely with our present Tory
government.
For R&D, we used to have some government research
centers in the UK responsible for the development of many new
technologies before they became mainstream, but under the Tory
privatization policies, these have been converted into privately-run
“science parks” spending time only on projects most likely to turn an
immediate profit. Universities are perhaps the only places left for pure
research, and grants could be given to those already engaged in
promising new developments to ease the way for them. Scotland has a special fund for green development, but Scotland does not have a Tory government, as is our misfortune in England.
To make better use of renewable energy systems, we
need more storage on the grid. The latest wind turbines have storage
built in, so that they can be self buffering for short periods, but
large-scale storage, using batteries, flywheels, pumped hydro, or
whatever the inventive mind can develop, needs to be added to the grid.
The EU is developing an EU-wide smart grid,
so that power can be distributed all across Europe from where it is
being generated to where it is needed. The foolish Tory “Brexiters” in
the UK might make participation in that more difficult.
All other methods of energy harvesting, such as
hydro, wave, tidal, and geothermal, need to be developed and utilized as
soon as possible in the UK.
We need definite plans for the phasing out of all
fossil fuel burning as alternatives become available, and to make every
effort to make those alternatives available as soon as possible. This
would include fossil fuel burning in power stations, transport, and for
domestic and industrial space heating.
The key phrase here is “as alternatives become
available.” We cannot simply turn off the valve at the oil well, leaving
people with nothing, and there is no point at all in replacing one
fossil fuel, such as coal or oil, with another, such as gas, which is
only slightly less damaging to the environment. When the gas is shale
gas, obtained by hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking,” as it has come to
be known), where the product might be slightly less damaging, the process represents huge additional risks to the environment.
These risks are mainly poisoning the water table and the release of
large quantities of methane into the atmosphere. Similarly, although
nuclear power stations might score a point by generating electricity
without the release of CO2 or methane, we ask how many more nuclear disasters
will it take before people consider that this is not such a good idea
after all? Also, the cost of decommissioning and dealing with nuclear
waste adds enormously to the very high cost of building and maintaining
these stations. The 2017 forecast is that future clean-up across the UK
will cost around £119 billion spread across the next 120 years or so. See the government report.
This is just for the 17 oldest sites, and does not include newer sites
still operating, and those yet (if ever) to be built, such as Hinkley
Point C.
One obvious choice is to replace fossil fuels with
biofuels where they cannot yet be replaced by renewable energy sources,
but there is some level of controversy about that. Biofuels release CO2
into the atmosphere, but this is CO2 that was in the atmosphere during
the lifecycle of whichever plant source is being used. This could be a
few weeks, in the case of algae, or months, with fast-growing grasses,
or perhaps a year or two, in the case of fast-growing shrubs like
willow, or even 20 years or so in the case of a tree. Fossil fuels, on
the other hand, release CO2 into today’s atmosphere from the atmosphere
of millions of years ago, when the organic material from which they are
formed was living. Biofuels, therefore, are cycling CO2, and so are
carbon neutral, whereas fossil fuels positively add to the CO2 levels in
the atmosphere.
However, we rely on plants of all kinds in all places
on the planet to absorb carbon dioxide and provide us with oxygen, so
that biofuel production would have to be very carefully managed so as to
increase, rather than reduce, the total capability of plant life to
absorb carbon dioxide across the planet. Also, any process of burning
produces pollutants in addition to CO2, such as carbon monoxide,
particulates, and nitrous oxides such as nitrogen dioxide, so it’s not
an ideal solution. Though not ideal, it would still be better to use
biofuels where fuel has to be used, rather than continuing to burn
fossil fuels. There are many areas, such as aviation, shipping, and
heavy haulage, where currently there are no easy alternatives.
Alternatives need to be developed, and are being developed right now.
In aviation, the low energy density of batteries when
compared with aviation fuel makes a straight swap between 10 tons of
aviation fuel and 10 tons of batteries one that would leave an aircraft
short of range. Jet engines are a mature technology, but electric
propulsion systems are in their infancy. There is also a technical
difficulty, in that the maximum take-off weight of an aircraft is more
than the maximum landing weight. This is because the aircraft is lifting
away from the ground on take-off, but falling towards the ground on
landing, and so has a downward momentum which has to be absorbed in the
landing gear at the point of impact. During a jet-fueled flight, many
tons of aviation fuel will be burnt in the engines, but a
battery-powered aircraft is exactly the same weight during both take-off
and landing.
Plans for electric short-haul aircraft are already
being developed, and 1- to 5-seat electric aircraft already exist, but
long-distance aircraft will still need to use aviation fuel unless some
as yet unknown technology is developed. Biofuels are the only current
solution.
Shipping, on the other hand, seems ripe for
electrification as weight is less of an impediment, and ships have
dead-weight above the keel, known as ballast, to keep the ship upright
in the water, so batteries would make just as good of a ballast as
concrete or lead. The old sailing clippers could do around 20 knots,
which is faster than most modern cargo ships. There will not be a return
to sail, however, because it was a very labor-intensive and dangerous
operation. A modern version, with rigid, vertical, wing-like “sails”
which are entirely motor-controlled, can be used as a supplementary
power source, even on an unmanned autonomous ship. Ships are also
ideally suited to take advantage of solar power out on the open ocean.
It seems to me that shipping could very easily be developed toward a
fossil-fuel-free fleet.
For heavy haulage, we now have the Tesla semi-truck
and other contenders soon coming into the market, and smaller trucks and
vans are already available as electric vehicles. Electric buses are
very available and are being deployed, especially in China, where they
exist in the thousands. For private cars, we are now at the stage of
having, in the UK at least, good charging infrastructure and perfectly
acceptable EVs for people to buy — both new and used, and to lease. We
also have a reasonably good grant scheme for buying the cars, at £4,500
for a new EV. Home charging units are only £150 or so with a government
grant. However, the government has not raised the fuel tax in the 2017
budget, which would have been a good way of forcing the pace of change,
especially away from polluting diesel, It would not only make drivers
think more urgently about changing to an EV, but would also reduce
unnecessary car journeys and make walking, cycling, and public transport
more appealing. It did increase the annual vehicle tax (Vehicle Excise
Duty, or VED) for all diesel vehicles by moving them all up into the
next tax-band, where EVs still have a VED of £0. As I mentioned earlier,
the government also continues to give £6 billion in tax breaks annually
to fossil fuel corporations, which somewhat dwarfs the one-off 2017
budget commitment of £500 million to encourage electric vehicle take-up.
That £500 million includes the cost of the electric vehicle grant
scheme which already exists, and so is not new money, and they have also
said, mysteriously, that £400 million is for the encouragement and
development of charging infrastructure. I say “mysteriously” because
they already have the grants for home charging, and the UK already has
the most comprehensive charging infrastructure on our motorways of any
country in Europe, courtesy of Ecotricity.
Chargers are sparse in some areas of the country, and certainly some
central government planning is essential to ensure good coverage across
the UK, but this requires liaison with all of the main players, rather
than any new money. Like many Tory government announcements, the 2017
budget commitment of £500 million is something of a PR stunt to make a
good impression, rather than doing what is needed to achieve their
stated aim.
In Part 1 of this article,
I have already gone into sufficient detail about space heating,
methane, and food production, and the production of gas from
bio-materials from otherwise non-productive land. See this CleanTechnica article
where Dale Vince of Ecotricity says they have the system for meeting
all of the UK’s gas needs using un-productive land, if they had access
to it.
I also said:
“In general, it must be made illegal to seek out any new sources of fossil fuels, or to drill any exploratory well or mine to test for the existence of fossil fuel deposits. All current fossil fuel production must cease, and wells and mines decommissioned as soon as alternative energy sources become available. To put it more simply, all fossil fuels must be left in the ground as soon and as much as is practically possible.”
I cannot see Republicans or Tories doing any such
thing. In the UK, the main player in the fight against fossil fuel
pollution has been Sadiq Kahn, the London Mayor, who is quite
aggressively and rapidly imposing expanding zones where
polluters have to pay a high premium to drive their vehicles. This has
already resulted in air quality improvements, but soon the zone is to be
expanded to the North and South Circular Roads, which means nearly all
of London. The central UK government is doing nothing of that kind, but
this needs to be adopted in all major cities. As long as people are
allowed to drive their polluting vehicles where ever they want, they
have no incentive beyond their own conscience to change to zero-carbon
transport. They will continue to burn fossil fuels with disastrous
consequences.
I also mentioned energy efficiency, and could say
more about that. It is extraordinary to me that we in the UK are mainly
constructing buildings using materials and techniques which have changed
little since Elizabeth I was on the throne. We now use double glazing,
and double walls with an insulated cavity, and we do have insulation in
the roof space, but we are still building with bricks and mortar, wood,
and tiles, just as then. Buildings can and should be built in factories
and erected on-site, using highly-insulating materials and designs,
which eliminate the need for space heating and cooling. The buildings
would have an energy-harvesting surface and an energy-retentive surface,
and be positioned in relation to the direction of the Sun, which is
south in the UK. The government could introduce radical new building
regulations to ensure that all new houses are energy neutral, generating
all the energy they will use. This could massively reduce the amount of
energy required for domestic houses. It could also set up schemes to
bring older houses up to standard, and although that is happening to
some extent, it is hardly sufficient to make much impact. The EU has
introduced some regulations for domestic appliances to encourage greater
efficiency and less energy usage, such as a limit on the wattage of
vacuum cleaner motors and a ban on incandescent lightbulbs. Every
appliance has a label on it showing the level of efficiency represented
by letters A to E, which helps consumers to make the right choices. All
of these are good but could be better, and one of the worries about
“Brexit” is that away from the good influence of the EU, our Tory
government will not adhere even to these mild measures.
So in conclusion, while it is easy to note down all
that could and should be done, it is not happening, and governments,
especially those with a Neoliberal ideology, just seem to be pursuing a
“business-as-usual” fossil fuel-loving policy with a thin veneer of PR,
otherwise known in more honest circles as lies and deceit, in order to
give the appearance of concern for the environment. Unless these
governments change their ways, or are removed at the ballot box, there
is little hope for the future of this planet for future generations. We
all need to do everything in our power to wake the collective human mind
from its slumber, before we sleepwalk off the cliff.
Links
- The Science Of Global Warming And The Causes & Prevention Of Climate Change (Part 1)
- Will Australia’s Major Cities Suffer +50° Celsius Heatwaves Soon?
- Australia Poised For Renewable Energy Breakout
- Solar Grid Parity For Australia By 2020 As Renewables Surge
- South Australia Approves World’s Largest Single-Tower Thermal
- National Australia Bank Ceases Financing Of New Thermal Coal
- Australia’s First Offshore Wind Farm Takes Next Step Toward
- Australian Solar Installs Are Going Through The Roof
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