Click on the headline (link) for the full text.
Many more articles are available through the Energy Bulletin homepage
BAA and police draw up Heathrow battle lines
Dan Milmo, Helen Pidd and John Vidal, The Guardian
Heathrow is braced for direct action by environmental activists, with fears the airport will be paralysed this weekend by protesters attempting to shut down access roads.
The airport owner BAA has drawn up contingency plans to protect terminals and perimeter fences as it tries to second guess thousands of campaigners gathering for today’s launch of an eight-day climate change action camp.
Camp organisers agreed to have four police officers stationed on the site to try to reduce increasing tension between campaigners and Scotland Yard. Protesters yesterday accused the police of heavy-handedness and of needlessly using anti-terrorism powers to stop and search everyone approaching the camp, to prevent any access by vehicles, and to inspect the site.
(14 August 2007)
More coverage at the Guardian’s environmental section.
Zerocarbonbritain – a new energy strategy
Richard Hawkins and Arthur Girling, People & Planet
Britain must eliminate all carbon emissions within 20 years by halving energy demand and installing massive renewable energy generation, according to a new report from the Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT).
The UK Government’s target of 60 per cent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 is one of the strictest emissions targets in the world. But if we are to avoid uncontrollable ‘runaway’ climate change, we need to make bigger cuts faster, according to the Zerocarbonbritain report.
In several recent reports, scientists have highlighted ‘climate feedback mechanisms,’ whereby global warming triggers further, faster warming, quickly spiralling out of human control. This ‘tipping point’ is estimated at 2°C above pre-industrial global average temperatures. Zerocarbonbritain also acknowledges the importance of moving away from fossil fuels, as the world passes the point of peak oil production.
Zerocarbonbritain is an alternative energy strategy which demonstrates that it is possible to reduce our emissions by 100% within 20 years, if the right policy drivers are put in place. It may seem ambitious, but as CAT Development Director Paul Allen said, “Climate change is now an emergency, so we need a strategy that can reduce our carbon dioxide emissions as quickly as possible.
“Instead of forecasting from within existing attitudes and approaches, we ‘backcasted,’ looking at the reductions we urgently need to make, then seeing how quickly we can achieve them. We are confident that if Britain treated this as the serious emergency it is, we could eliminate fossil fuels within 20 years,” Mr Allen said.
Zerocarbonbritain shows the UK could reduce its total energy use by 50 per cent, and power up renewable energy to meet the remaining demand using a range of technologies including offshore wind, wave and tidal power.
(14 August 2007)
The report is online. -BA
The editorials urge us to cut emissions, but the ads tell a very different story
George Monbiot, The Guardian
Newspaper exhortations on climate change sit uncomfortably alongside —
I am sorry to be crude, but however else I try to say it, the phrase “lying bastards” comes to mind. In March, I claimed that the government was fudging its figures on cutting carbon emissions and that it was due to miss its targets for renewable energy. It denied the charges, claimed its cuts were ” correctly quantified” and suggested I had got my facts wrong. Yesterday, the Guardian published a secret briefing by civil servants admitting that the government’s programmes are way off track and urging ministers to try to amend them not with new investments but through “statistical interpretations of the target”.
While no expense is spared in expanding motorways, airports and thermal power stations, every possible tactic is used to frustrate the programme for installing renewable power. The reason is not hard to fathom: big business has invested massively in constructing old technologies and wants to maximise its returns before switching to the new ones. It also demands the hyper-mobility which enables its executives and its goods and services to go anywhere at any time.
But I write all this with the blush of the hypocrite, for I have been forced to concede that, I too, am complicit in the strategies of corporate power. A few weeks ago I was challenged by the editors of a website called Medialens over advertisements carried by the Guardian. Does not part of my living ultimately come from the companies I campaign against? Why don’t I discuss this contradiction in my column?
(14 August 2007)
I am very unenthusiastic about the MediaLens campaign against the Guardian, etc. described by Monbiot. Hyper-moralistic rhetoric is counter-productive to any real world strategy. I don’t care where news organizations get their money, as long as they do good reporting. -BA
Renewable energy: No policies, no cash. The result: missed targets
Ashley Seager and Mark Milner, Guardian
Environmentalists say the news that civil servants have briefed ministers that Britain has virtually no chance of meeting the new EU renewables target comes as little surprise to them and those in the industry who have long complained of the lack of proper government policies to boost the new technologies.
The briefing paper obtained by the Guardian shows that on current policies Britain will have only 5% of its energy from renewables by 2020, a fraction of the EU target of 20%.
Mike Childs, campaigns director at Friends of the Earth, said: “We are an island that has fantastic potential for renewable power and could be leading the world with a major new industry. Instead this government seems determined to back failed nuclear power and squash the prospects of a clean renewables industry.”
Andrew Simms of the New Economics Foundation agreed: “Gordon Brown needs to use his new authority to ensure that civil servants behind the scenes are not undermining international commitments that the government has signed up to.”
Other countries are doing much better. Germany, with a strong system of support for solar, wind and hydro power, has been expanding its use of renewables rapidly and now has 200 times as much installed solar power and 10 times as much wind power as Britain. Many other countries across Europe are also making rapid strides in renewable energy.
So what has gone wrong? We look at the various areas of UK policy on climate change in turn.
(13 August 2007)
