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Archive for the ‘climate change’ Category

biodiesel backlash began yesterday in Bristol

Posted in biofuel, chp, climate change, energy, engineering, renewable energy, sustainability, zero carbon, tagged on February 25, 2010| 6 Comments »

Sure, biodiesel is considered “renewable” in the upcoming building regs. But that won’t stop the backlash against developers who use it.

Yesterday a biodiesel generation plant proposed for Avonmouth near Bristol was rejected 6-2 in planning committee on the grounds of its  impact on rainforests on the other side of the globe. Of the 1,121 letters received by councilors in advance of the meeting, only 2 were in favour of the plant.

Strictly speaking, the application should not have been rejected. The plant passed air quality tests and all other material considerations.  The chairwoman of the committe went as far as saying she could find no reason to refuse the application and the city’s legal chief agreed. After all, it’s not the job of the planners to consider the source of fuel – that’s OFGEM’s role.

But that didn’t stop the committee throwing it out anyway, at the end of a fiery meeting, on moral and ethical grounds.

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two roads to solving the refurb crisis – part 2

Posted in climate change, energy, engineering, ESCO, PAYS, renewable energy, sustainability, utilities, zero carbon, tagged , , , on February 22, 2010| 6 Comments »

In Whitehall, advocates of PAYS and an expanded suppliers obligation are clashing over which mechanism should be used to refurb existing housing. This is the second post of two. If you missed it, read the first part here.

Here’s a quick summary of the two mechanisms:

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two roads to solving the refurb crisis – part 1

Posted in climate change, Code for Sustainable Homes, energy, engineering, ESCO, passivhaus, PAYS, renewable energy, sustainability, utilities, zero carbon, tagged , , , , on February 14, 2010| 5 Comments »

Hitting the 80% carbon reduction by 2050 has huge implications (and costs) for the residential sector. Two strategies are emerging for dealing with these costs, each with its own potentially severe side effects.

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FiT as pants as expected – but holy smokes look at that RHI!

Posted in biofuel, biomass, chp, climate change, energy, engineering, feed in tariff, renewable energy, renewable heat incentive on February 1, 2010| 6 Comments »

DECC have announced the final FiT levels in advance of the incentive coming in in April. Having had a number of disheartening conversations with policy makers over the last few months, the FiT levels are no surprise. No one in government seemed to mind that the FiT would be a subsidy for middle class greenies and folks like McAlpines. The important thing was that the FiT wouldn’t cost too much.

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gov’t to ministers: don’t mention peak oil

Posted in agriculture, climate change, consumerism, tagged , , , on August 18, 2009| 2 Comments »

I’ve just finished watching the first of three episodes of The Future of Food on iplayer. In it there’s a fascinating interview with Hilary Benn, secretary of state for DEFRA. Fascinating not because of what he says, but what he doesn’t say. On this programme about the upcoming global food shortages (mainly due to fuel prices, water shortage, and changing climate), he says:

We know we’re going to have to grow more food with a changing climate and probably less water being available… I think looking at what happened last year, the food riots, the rise in prices, we’ve got to take responsibility now to ensure that people have enough food to eat.

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planning reports may be ticking time bombs

Posted in biomass, chp, climate change, Code for Sustainable Homes, energy, engineering, london, private wire, renewable energy, SAP, sustainability, zero carbon, tagged on August 6, 2009| 1 Comment »

For consultants, energy reports for planning are fantastic: a bit of SAP, a few benchmarks, some spreadsheet magic, and hey presto you’re sending an invoice. But the contents of the energy report can have huge implications, in some cases committing the scheme to commercially or legally impossible strategies, causing delays and increasing costs later in the programme. Here are a couple of examples:

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Sunday Times quote

Posted in climate change, Code for Sustainable Homes, other stuff, renewable energy, zero carbon on August 3, 2009| 2 Comments »

Made it into the Sunday Times this weekend in an article titled Ed Miliband’s carbon neutral homes pledge in peril.

Two things: first, I sometimes feel a little uneasy speaking to journalists because I might be selectively quoted – but I needn’t have worried. And second, it’s very interesting to see this sort of article making its way into the mainstream press. Discussion about  low carbon is spreading outside the building industry.

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document mania – reading roundup

Posted in climate change, energy, feed in tariff, renewable energy, sustainability, zero carbon, tagged , , , , , on July 16, 2009| 2 Comments »

Government launched a barrage of documents at us yesterday. I was mostly watching out for the Renewable Strategy but that was only a small part of it. Here’s the reading roundup:

  • UK Low Carbon Transition Plan – this is the overarching doc. It’s basically the roadmap to meeting the legally binding carbon budgets from now to 2050 with some good stuff on how it will be done. But puts a hell of a lot of faith in nuclear, building new coal (with mythical magical CCS), and the efficacy of the EU ETS. 7m homes to get refurbed under Pay as You Save (more on this later). Cars to emit less carbon.
  • Consultation on Renewable and Small Scale Low Carbon Electricity Financial Incentives – the consultation on the RO and the Feed in Tariff. They appear to have watered down the FiT saying 5% return is enough to attract investment. We’ve got to stop the government from nickel and diming its way into grand sounding but useless gestures.
  • Renewable Energy Strategy – Following the draft version in 2008, this doc lays out the map for the UK to meet 15% of its total energy requirements from renewables by 2020 (this in an EU requirement as opposed to the other targets with are internal). A good thing: renewables claiming FiT’s are also likely to count towards Zero Carbon standard.
  • Low Carbon Industrial Strategy – much of the above recycled but in the context of UK business. How jobs will be created and the costs of transitioning to a low carbon economy will be minimised. It might have been the picture of Peter Mandelson in the intro, but I struggled to maintain any enthusiasm reading this one. Tidal power to get £60m. Nuclear to get a £15m research centre (let the subsidies begin!), the SW of England to become a pilot low carbon economic area.

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2013 comes two years early

Posted in climate change, energy, engineering, renewable energy, sustainability, zero carbon on May 20, 2009| 5 Comments »

We’ve all seen the private development sector hit the skids over the past nine months. At the moment, the only residential projects that seem to be going ahead are those with a large RSL component (and so grant-funded by the HCA). This has a serious implication from a regs point of view because from spring 2011 all publicly funded housing will have to meet Code 4 (pdf). That effectively means that the residential development sector, such as it is, has to meet its regulatory targets two years early.

Here’s a map (ok, I know Code 6 won’t look quite like that once the consultation finished, but it will still be a hell of a drop):

Regs-emissions-over-time-RSL2

Bob Cervi, the editor at the CIBSE Journal, writes this month that on the road to zero carbon “it’s going to be a quick six years.”

It’s going to be an even quicker 5.

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nicholas stern’s blueprint for a safer planet

Posted in climate change, sustainability on April 30, 2009| Leave a Comment »

I just listened to Nicholas Stern’s lecture at LSE on the train on the way home. It’s extremely interesting – have a listen if you haven’t already. Ricardo at XCO2e has posted a text summary here.

A couple of things that rubbed the wrong way:

  1. I find it odd when scientists, agencies, economists, etc base predictions on future population on current rates of growth – assuming 9 billion by 2050. It’s like a strange form of tunnel vision.
  2. While he described the hydrocardon economy as self-destructive, declining output didn’t seem to figure largely in his thinking
  3. How does he imagine we’ll feed such a population without fossil fuel derived fertiliser?

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