When is Zero not Zero?

I'd missed this - it is now proposed that 0%=56%. That's the gist of the Zero-Carbon Hub's proposal for 2016 building regs: a "zero-carbon home" may have emissions as great as just 44% below 2006 building regs. This is nuts. These buildings will be around for years and years - not going for stringent regs now will simply burden all of us with the need to cut emissions even further in other walks of life. This was supposed to be the "greenest government ever" - it's hardly khaki at the moment. Oh, and to top it all the HCA will not be required to achieve Code Level 4 for new homes funded via it as previously announced.
What's the matter with the country when its building industry's core competence is lobbying ministers so that it can remain a bunch if feeble fannies foisting crap homes on the poor captive public? Shame on the lot of them.

Proposing the right sorts of actions

I've been enjoying a spell of fairly intensive contract work - hence the gap in blog posts. However, I've now had a chance to glance at DECC's electricity market reform proposals. All-in-all they aim to do the right sorts of things:
1) Long-term firm(ish) contracts for clean generation. These should reduce uncertainty and encourage more clean generation provided that the details can be sorted out. The preferred model is one based on contracts for differences which the market knows all about from privatisation. The trick is pitching the original PPA correctly.
2) Capacity payments. (Bring back LOLP*VOLL??!!??). These are needed to encourage potentially uneconomic peaking/reserve plant. My initial reaction to the proposed capacity margin manager (system operator?) and tender process is that it feels rather clunky and a bit of a step into the dark. My comment re LOLP*VOLL is not entirely tongue in cheek.
3) Carbon price support. Well - I've banged on about this before in this blog. The one thing that will worry a lot of people is that it is likely to benefit nuclear. This is not an issue as far as I'm concerned but does purturb some of my "greener" friends.
4) Emissions performance standard. Again, the devil will be in the detail but, clearly, coalers without CCS will be disadvantaged.
So far so good.

Cancun

I guess I have to say something.

Well, it was largely a diplomatic triumph with no big issues settled and a lot of the agreements being of the "agreeing to agree" type. But it was a step up from Copenhagen and at the periphery there are good news stories. Take Brazil's fight against deforestation, for instance. So what is it with Bolivia? Was this essentially President Morales in teddy-throwing mode?

One has to remain hopeful.

Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics

Today in a report on Boris's change of air quality targets the Grauniad repeats it reporting, first aired in June, that poor air quality results in 4267 (exactly??) Londoners dying prematurely each year. Of course, the Grauniad fails to say anything about the distribution of those deaths. How many are estimated to be 10 minutes premature, or 10 hours, or 10 days, or 10 months? I just hate it when shock horror stories are promulgated without the information to allow one to understand just what's going on.

Sustainable Hospitality

Edie has a short article describing a report from Whitbread on sustainable hospitality. Apparently ten recommendations flow from it:-

·Sharing is the solution for improvement

·Talk the same language

·Educating employees is vital

·Retro-fitting the estate is where the real gains can be made

·The UK hospitality industry needs its leaders to step up

·Sustainable hospitality does not mean living in a 'yurt economy' nor is it 'eco bling'

·The UK hospitality industry has an essential role to play in raising awareness of sustainability

·Consumers care

·Management needs to move away from simple forecasting strategies for business growth and embrace 'back-casting'

·There is a 'green pound' and more should be done to help consumers make informed choices

Seems like another case of stating the bleedin' obvious. Edie's article implies that the report will not be universally available but will be shared with government, the industry and its supply chain. Frankly, if the above is all it really says then it doesn't matter where it goes - it's another case of spouting motherhood and apple pie when some action is what is really required.

To Pair Or Not To Pair

Did you enjoy all that kerfuffle about whether Chris Huhne would be flying back for the fees vote or not? According to Edie it was partly due to the opposition not being willing to pair. Huhne is quote as saying "It is hugely regrettable that Ed Miliband's Labour Party has decided to put short-term political point scoring ahead of the long-term interests of the planet. They are putting the next two days ahead of the next two generations". Of course, Labour has a counter argument about management of parliamentary time to avopid such clashes. Don't you just wish that the whole lot of them could grow up and avoid sounding so infantile in public?

Camden's "Green" Fleet

Edie today reports that Camden has become the first council to launch a fleet of vehicles powered entirely by renewable energy. We're actually talking biomethane from a landfill site here. I always feel slightly equivocal about describing this as "renewable". Afterall, it would be far better not to have the landfill in the first place. However, given that it does exist, congratulations to Camden for taking this initiative.

That Football Thing

Now that the fuss has died down a few words on that football thing. Both the Sunday Times expose and the Panorama programme were good bits of investigative journalism into an organisation that appears to grossly corrupt. So why all the hand-wringing about delaying the broadcast/publication? This would have just been playing along with Fifa and its unpleasant activities - and that would have been utterly shameful. If Fifa doesn't like its dirty linen to be washed in public then it would be better that they cleaned it up themselves. So England will not host the 2018 tournament - tough - at least we still have press and tv that has a semblance of freedom.

Low carbon gas-fired power plant

There's a report in the FT today that Powerfuel and Calix are to build a demonstration plant incorporating a CO2 removal process pioneered by Calix. This process appears to be a spin-off from Calix's core activity which is calcining minerals (particularly limestone and dolomite) which, of course, normally results in significant CO2 emissions. There's no way of telling from Calix's website just how their emissions capture technique works, nor what impact it has on the overall efficiency of the generation process (a big drawback of other CCS technologies). We watch with interest.

The same article quotes Michael Gibbons, director of Powerfuel Power who are hoping to build a syngas-fired powerplant (it looks hellishly complicated) at their Hatfield Colliery site, indicating that a carbon price of at least £20/tonne is required to make the project commercially viable. I must say, just looking at the nature of the gasification plant and the treatment plant, that £20/tonne feels rather light to me. Even so it's well above the current traded price of carbon (below €15/tonne last time I looked) and makes an interesting adjunct to DECC's theoretical musings on carbon prices.

Oh! Come On Vince

What is it with the atmosphere at Westminster? Is there some virus floating around that only attacks people with MP after their name? Or is there a tiny bug that seeps up through the floor of the Commons and, via a process of osmosis, enters the feet of all who tread therein? Vince Cable is reportedly thinking of abstaining on the tuition fee policy that he, himself, has developed. This is just daft. OK - so the party was pledged to do something different if it got into power and clearly had not thought through the consequences of power sharing (actually, I suspect had never really thought about being in power at all!) - a problem for the party in general. But for VC it should be clear - he must vote for what he is now proposing. I'm more and more tempted to rip up my membership card.

Testing the Efficacy of a Carbon Tax?

From page 99 of Ireland's Recovery Plan - the carbon tax, introduced in the 2010 budget at €15 per tonne will increase by €10 in 2012 and a further €5 in 2014. This is dressed up in the document as a climate change measure, and so it is, but one has to wonder whether a doubling over 4 years would have happened if Irish finances had not been in such a dire state.

As do many others, I worry about carbon taxes because they pre-determine a price for carbon and do not necessarily deliver the required emissions reduction. That's not to say that cap and trade does not have its problems either - especially all the issues around grandfathering rights. However, it will be fascinating to see if it is possible to discern any effect from this fairly steep increase. Somehow I think the general noise from all the other measures being undertaken by the Irish Government will thoroughly mask any meaningful analysis - and the perennial counterfactual issue remains.


P.S. And I see that there is also a pledge to charge for domestic water by 2014 (page 77). Now this really does set up the possibility of a wide scale experiment in the effects of per unit charging on demand. Incidentally, the document is commendably honest in portraying this primarily as a cost saving measure, not as a demand reduction, conservation, measure.

Science Museum's New Climate Science Gallery

HRH Prince of Wales will open the Science Museum's new gallery on climate science on 3rd December. Professor Chris Rapley CBE, Director of the Science Museum, said, “The Science Museum’s role is to make sense of the science that shapes our lives – our latest addition, atmosphere, aims to make sense of one of the biggest issues today, climate change." Amen to that. I have recently been engaged in a frustrating exchange with a deep sceptic who will simply not accept the basic principles on scientific investigation and who will quote any old sceptical blob in support of his stance. The trouble is he is articulate and the whole of his discourse has a veneer of reasonableness which could easily sway the unpersuaded. So, good luck Science Museum (and hopefully we won't have any of HRH's more bizarre beliefs on show).