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).