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The Generator news service publishes articles on sustainable development, agriculture and energy as well as observations on current affairs. The news service is used on the weekly radio show, The Generator, as well as by a number of monthly and quarterly magazines. A podcast of the Generator news is also available.
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  • Schellnhuber: developed countries are ‘carbon insolvent’

     

    It sounds a lot. But European countries today emit about 11 tonnes annually for each inhabitant. It would be more if we counted the embedded emissions in goods we buy from China and elsewhere. Using Schellnhuber’s rough numbers, Europeans will exhaust their allowance within ten years if emissions do not fall.

    Put another way, to meet the target Europe’s countries need to reduce per person emissions by about half a tonne a year every year for the next twenty years. Achieving this would require a near 5% cut next year, rising to 10% a year by 2020 and 20% annual reduction by 2025. As Stern has pointed out (Stern Review, p. 231) the only time even a 5% emissions reduction has ever been achieved over a large country for several years was the 1989 to 1998 period in the former Soviet Union, when emissions fell 5.2% per year.

    The 110 tonnes figure for the maximum permitted emissions per person omits consideration of the probable 40% increase in world population by 2050. This would cut the figure to 85 tonnes or so – less than eight years of current European per capita emissions. It also assumes that all world citizens have an equal right to a certain volume of emissions even though the developed world has been responsible for more than 80% of the increase in CO2 in the last century. Schellnhuber points out that if we allocated emissions rights in inverse proportion to historical CO2 output the developed countries would already be ‘carbon insolvent’.

    He concludes by saying that the richest one sixth of the world should pay $100 a year per person to help reduce the future emissions of low income countries. In effect, we would be paying poor states to hold their cumulative emissions per head below 110 tonnes so that we can overshoot our allowance. Compensating the least polluting countries for the almost certain failure of the developed world to keep within our quota must surely be the broad outline of any Copenhagen scheme that will be acceptable to the global south?

    • From Carbon Commentary, part of the Guardian Environment Network

  • Labour’s great green whimper

     

    But somewhere along the way politicians realise that they want to get re-elected. Instead of making cheap flights so expensive that we stop taking them, the pragmatists in power have decided to raise taxes slightly, hoping that we don’t really notice the difference. But someone always notices (the press release tends to give it away) and the Daily Mail’s message boards collapse under the weight of the home counties finding new and inventive spellings of “stealth tax”.

    If you want people to accept something then the last thing you do is associate it with taxation. However, fear of becoming unpopular has led to politicians doing just that. Instead of telling people what they don’t want to hear – that their lifestyle is built on unsustainable foundations and that big changes will have to be made – ministers would rather pretend that the only difference between stopping climate change and business as usual is turning our televisions off standby and paying a few extra pounds for a flight to Rome.

    But the public is not as stupid as the politicians think. They’ve noticed the disconnect between talk of global ecological disaster and a slight increase in taxes. It’s worrying that the How to Solve Climate Change handbook seems to be empty, except for the phrase “increase taxes” scrawled on every page in the chancellor’s handwriting. Meanwhile the government is doing everything it can to keep us polluting, encouraging airports all over the UK to grow as fast as they can pour the concrete and allowing adverts pushing unnecessary flights to grow alongside every high street.

    You can’t discourage flying with one hand and promote it with the other without being rightly labelled a hypocrite. How is the public, up to their eyeballs in loft insulation and recycling boxes, to react to reductions from every other sector because the aviation industry wants extra runways at Heathrow and Stansted? How can you take this government’s claims to be serious about tackling climate change when you can’t leave your house without a billboard inducing you to splash out on a plane ticket? Even Ed Miliband – the person who is supposed to be sorting this mess out – doesn’t see anything wrong with supporting taxes on air travel while declaring that a bigger airport in his constituency would be great for the economy.

    If something is wrong, then we should do everything we can to stop it. If ministers believe in climate change, they need to stop relying on taxes and start taking action. If flying is bad for the environment (and at 13% of our climate impact, I think it’s safe to say that it is) then we need to be flying less and closing down some of our runways, not being charged a little bit more to make up for all the flying we’re doing.

    When every square foot of public space is plastered with adverts for cheap flights and communities are being bulldozed to make way for new runways, whacking a tenner on a return trip to Europe isn’t strong leadership. Is that really how Labour wants its climate change strategy to be remembered: not for a bang, but a whimper?

  • Total bottled water consumption by region

     

    The worst culprit was Europe at 53,661 thousand cubic metres in 2004 – a surprising figure when you consider it also has some of the world’s most reliable and clean supplies of tap water.

    • DATA: Total bottled water consumption by region

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    Regions
    1997
    1998
    1999
    2000
    2001
    2002
    2003
    2004

    Total bottled water consumption by region (1997 to 2004)

    Measurement: Thousand cubic metres
    Europe 34,328 36,074 39,965 42,276 44,520 47,037 51,768 53,661
    North America 25,398 25,822 29,695 31,850 34,734 38,349 41,778 44,715
    Asia 12,472 14,820 17,647 21,170 24,824 29,783 32,795 35,977
    South America 5,484 6,362 7,323 8,528 9,915 11,437 12,677 13,607
    Africa/Middle East/Oceania 2,459 2,808 3,092 3,456 3,837 4,302 4,499 4,823
    All Others 508 1,953 737 891 1,033 1,592 1,407 1,597
    TOTAL 80,649 87,838 98,459 108,171 118,864 132,499 144,925 154,381

    Posted by Felicity Brown Wednesday 2 September 2009 15.15 BST guardian.com.

  • Renewables Impact on the Grid? Answers from Telecom History

    A Familiar Concern

    The concerns expressed today regarding the impact of widespread deployment of distributed renewable energy resources, also known as Distributed Generation (DG) on utility operations parallel anxieties expressed by AT&T when the first third-party telephone instrument and the first computer with modem were sought to be attached to their network. AT&T’s Bell system, having overall responsibility for the regulated, end-to-end network, asked: “A computer with a modem connects to the telephone network. Should it therefore be regulated? Should all computers be regulated?” Further it wondered, “How to distinguish between harmful and nonharmful interconnection … to protect the ratepayers’ network?” Will customers be “casting blame on the telephone company from the Bell system” should something go wrong?

    AT&T developed an interface device called the “protective coupling arrangement (PCA)” to control potential harm to the network. Despite the concerns, and with the famous Carterphone decision and FCC rulings, the courts and regulators allowed interconnection. Temin’s The Fall of the Bell System describes this in fascinating detail.

    The altered interconnection rules opened up the telephony network to new equipment, third party networks and new business arrangements. Eventually, the network itself was broken into administratively distinct pieces that have since remolded together in a new pattern. The telecom industry presents a gripping story of shifts in industry structure, innovation, technology mutations, parsing and recombination of network elements, and absorption of new technologies that led to the emergence of wireless telephony, data services, entertainment and the Internet. The modularization and re-assembly in new ways, like Lego blocks, is among the sources of the industry’s innovative vitality. The changes have been disruptive, and have occurred in overlapping phases. The aggregate effect is rise of the center-less, or multi-centered, converged yet diverging hybrid that is the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) industry today.

    Encouragement from the State

    The California Public Utilities Commission’s July 2009 solicitation for projects for funding details the risks of adding third party energy sources to the grid, and seeks the research and business community’s assistance to address them. It states, “Utilities lack understanding and familiarity with how PV systems will impact grid operations. Utilities are especially concerned about potential grid impacts associated with high penetration levels of PV that are likely to occur at the distribution level with increased PV market growth.”

    Will some areas require and deploy more PV arrays than others? Will fluctuations in power amount and quality affect grid operations and economics? Will the PV or wind turbine deployments be a resource for the utility to offset peak demand, or be a costly headache? The solicitation continues, “To date, distributed PV systems operate within the grid but their operations are not integrated into the electricity system and they are not treated like conventional power plants [emphasis mine]. Due to their small size and historically low market-penetration levels, distributed PV systems have fallen outside the scope of most utility planners and engineers. … In addition, due to the unexpectedly rapid growth in distributed PV systems, utility grid operation models and planning tools lack the ability to account for distributed PV generation technologies and resources.”

    Tipping Point

    Just like telephony infrastructure once was, the electric energy infrastructure appears monolithic to a telecom observer. It appears to be poised to confront similar issues with about a twenty-five year lag. But if telephony history is any guide — and the analogies that we recognize only go so far — all of these issues will not only be satisfactorily resolved, but rather will lead to innovation and growth, perhaps greater than what occurred in telecommunications. The operators of microgrids, renewable energy resources and DG are the equivalent of telecom pioneers of the past, like MCI, but they are not the only pioneers.

    The possibilities for Schumpeterian innovation by “combining things differently” are numerous — variety and quality of energy sources, use of creative financing like solar PPAs, new areas for scientific advance from LED lighting to thin films, new network topologies to aggregate “edge” generation sources, information overlays like the SmartGrid, and the inter-working of low emission automobiles with the electric infrastructure — all of these innovations, coupled with a favorable global and national policy, could lead to incredible leaps for the industry and mankind. Even to think of distributed PV systems, community power plants with “islanding” and “parallel” operations, is bold.

    For innovation, “distributed” or “edge” grid elements in large numbers matter; imagine the world of telephony without Blackberry, iPhone and Pre, and only stodgy display-less desktop telephones manufactured, distributed, and managed by a handful of companies in a regulated context.  A green social contagion is loose, of such sweep and of such collective focus that many operational, technical, scientific and political problems will be confronted and solved over the coming years.

    In the face of this wave of innovation, what option exists for utilities but to acquiesce, to find accord with the new social force? Joseph Campbell memorably said or quoted with Irish wit, “if you are falling, dive.” Co-opting Renewables and DG actively is the better part of valor, and good business strategy.

    Mahesh P. Bhave, LEED AP, is an engineer from IIT, Delhi, and a Ph.D. from Syracuse University.  He is the founder of a communications start-up in San Diego. 

  • Personal carbon trading: the next step in tackling carbon emissions?

     

    Government resistance
    Despite initial enthusiasm for a Personal Carbon Allowance (PCA) from former Environment Secretary David Miliband, Government support has now waned.

    Under such a scheme, every individual would be given a set allocation of carbon credits, which they could use to ‘pay’ for purchases like home energy usage and petrol.

    Those with low carbon usage would be able to sell their surplus credits on a carbon market, whilst those with high carbon consumption levels would have to buy credits.

    Having initially muted the idea, Defra then just as quickly dismissed it. A report published in 2008 said it was too costly.

    An RSA trial published at the end of 2008 has since contradicted this judgement saying it would be, ‘relatively quick and easy to automatically capture and report personal carbon emissions for all UK citizens.’

    But, David’s brother Ed Miliband who took over the climate change brief last year indicated it was more about public acceptability, saying it was ‘an idea for the longer term’.

    Psychological issues
    But by dismissing the idea has the Government given up a vital tool for engaging the public in tackling climate change?

    ‘One of the obstacles to feeling responsible for climate change is that it is so removed from individual experience,’ says Stuart Capstick, who has been researching PCT at the School of Psychology, Cardiff University.

    ‘PCT has the ability to make this connection between climate change and the individual by showing us what is a fair amount of carbon for each of us to use.’

    An organiser from the 10:10 said making carbon visible and tangible to individuals was one of the main reasons behind their campaign.

    ‘We’re trying to take peoples’ minds off long-term targets like 2020 and focus on the immediate need for action on climate change. Instead of worrying or feeling guilty, individuals can to do something about it,’ said the organiser.

    ‘Voluntary individual action is never going to be enough on its own but we’re trying to get the ball rolling for the transition to a low carbon economy. Something the government for all their talk have not yet started.’

    The 10:10 campaign is not the first scheme to trial out voluntary individual carbon cutting.

    A report earlier this year from the UK Energy Research Centre on the experience of people involved in Carbon Rationing Action Groups (Crags) showed that carbon allowances could be successful in reducing carbon emissions.

    However, it did also raise issues some concerns, including whether children would have their own carbon allowances, whether some people would be unwilling to get involved in trading permits and the difficulties of carbon budgeting, which would have to be resolved before any scheme was introduced.

    A Plan B for government?
    The Government may not be keen to tackle these issues now, but a major report due out next week will say they might have to use PCAs in the future to reduce emissions.

    Plan B? The prospects for personal carbon trading, to be published by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) this Friday, says existing measures on reducing individuals’ carbon impact, such as smart meters and the Low Carbon Buildings Programme should be given time to succeed.

    ‘But if those policies don’t deliver then the Government may have to reconsider personal carbon allowances,’ concludes the IPPR.

    The biggest danger with all this talk about PCAs, voluntary or compulsory, says WWF change strategist Dr Tom Crompton, is that it could take the focal point off government action.

    ‘Voluntary action is an important step but we have to be cautious that individual action doesn’t detract from what government still needs to do at Copenhagen and beyond.

    ‘As well as taking individual action we people to make more vocal demands on government by lobbying their MPs and protesting,’ he said

  • Elimination of food waste could lift 1 bn out of hunger , say campaigners/

     

    Tristram Stuart, author of a new book on food waste and a contributor to a special food waste issue of the Food Ethics Council’s magazine, said: “There are nearly a billion malnourished people in the world, but all of them could be lifted out of hunger with less than a quarter of the food wasted in Europe and North America. In a globalised food system, where we are all buying food in the same international market place, that means we’re taking food out of the mouths of the poor.”

    Stuart calculated that the hunger of 1.5bn people could be alleviated by eradicating the food wasted by British consumers and American retailers, food services and householders, including the arable crops such as wheat, maize and soy to produce the wasted meat and dairy products. He added that the production of wasted food also squanders resources, and said that the irrigation water used by farmers to grow wasted food would be enough for the equivalent domestic water needs of 9bn people.

    Food waste costs every household in the UK between £250 and £400 a year, figures that are likely to be updated this autumn when the government’s waste agency WRAP publishes new statistics. Producing and distributing the 6.7m tonnes of edible food that goes uneaten and into waste in the UK also accounts for 18m tonnes of CO2.

    But Tom MacMillan, executive director of the Food Ethics Council, warned that reducing food waste alone would not be enough to alleviate hunger, because efficiency gains in natural resources are routinely cancelled out by growth in consumption. “Food waste is harmful and unfair, and it is essential to stop food going into landfill. But the irony is that consumption growth and persistent inequalities look set to undo the good that cutting food waste does in reducing our overall use of natural resources and improving food security,” he said.

    MacMillan explained that the land and resources freed up by cutting food waste would likely be put to producing and consuming other things, such as growing more resource-intensive and expensive foods, bio-energy or textile crops. “Now is the moment all parties should be searching out ways to define prosperity that get away from runaway consumption. Until they succeed, chucking out less food won’t make our lifestyles more sustainable,” he said.

    In addition to cutting down on waste, experts suggested food waste that does end up in bins could be dealt with in more environmentally friendly ways.

    Paul Bettison, chair of the Local Government Association environment board, wrote: “Many councils are now giving residents a separate bin for their food waste. Leftovers are being turned into fertiliser, or gas to generate electricity. In some areas, in-vessel composting and anaerobic digestion are playing a key role in cutting council spending on landfill tax and reducing methane emissions.”

    But there are obstacles to generating energy and producing compost from food waste, he warned. “Lack of infrastructure is holding back the drive to make getting rid of food waste cheaper and greener. Councils do not want to collect leftovers without somewhere to send them, but nobody wants to build the places to send food waste until it is being collected.”

    Writing in the magazine, the retail industry defended sell-by and use-by dates, which were criticised as confusing by environment secretary Hilary Benn in June. Andrew Opie, director of food and consumer policy at the British Retail Consortium, wrote: “Certainly, some customers aren’t clear about what the different dates mean but getting rid of them won’t reduce food waste. Customer education will.”

    Last month, the government also criticised supermarket “bogof” offers (buy one get one free) that encourage shoppers to buy food they don’t need and which ends up unused in bins, adding to the UK’s food waste mountain.

    The renewed push for action on food waste comes comes as a National Zero Waste Week by online campaigners and bloggers gets under way, encouraging individuals to go one day without putting anything in their bins.

    Food waste tips from the web

    • Don’t fall for “three for two” deals on fresh food unless you’ll definitely use them – Susan Smillie, Guardian food blogger

    • Plan weekly meals and stick to shopping lists – Susan Smillie

    • Keep your fridge at 1-5 degrees to make chilled food last for longer – lovefoodhatewaste.com

    • Remove bad apples! One bad apple can spoil the barrel, so separate fruit which is ripening faster than the others – Womens’ Institute

    • Just chuck your leftover veggies into a stockpot to make a delicious stock for soups – Thomasina Miers, MasterChef winner and food writer

    • Use your eyes and nose as a guide and ignore the sell-by date – Guardian user “hrhpod” on the Word of Mouth blog

    • Watch your portion sizes and make sure plates are being completely cleared at mealtimes – Annette Richards on lovefoodhatewaste.com

    • Make sure vegetables are stored correctly, with root vegetables kept in cool dark locations rather than refrigerators – “leuan” on Word of Mouth

    • Leave most vegetables and fruit in the fridge until a day or two before you’re going to use them: you could extend their life by a fortnight – lovefoodhatewaste.com

    • Make DIY frozen ready meals by freezing excess food, such as mashed potato, into portions – Sarah Beeny

    Share your tips for avoiding food waste on our Green Living Blog and you could win a £60 composter