- green energy for all ?
This is the manifesto area to debate and create key energy and the environment policies.
We have made a start as below to get the ball moving, feel free to add to, debate or suggesrt amendments. The LGO administrators will try to compile the best ideas based on the balance of debate and update this post to reflect them.
No.1
General policy aim to become as self sufficient in energy as reasonably possible using renewable resources and Nuclear energy ? within our own Borders.
No.2
Do we need nuclear at all? See Nick Taylors post . France seem to have made a sucess of Nuclear energy to the extent that they export it here, but what are the hidden costs? Are we being told the truth? Can we get by without it ?
I appreciate the above is not a manifesto point but a list of questions. Nuclear is a critical debating point.
I dont know what the right answer is. just trying to suggest some of the right questions.
No.3
Phased re-nationalisation of energy so the people can exercise some genuine control over acritical service.
N0.4
Huge increase in Gravity harvesting schemes (e.g. the severn tidal scheme) and micro schemes along similar lines. Tidal ranges in the UK are often more than 10m and in the Bristol channel it can be 15m!! Imagine how much energy a 15m high wall of water ( about a 6 story building) crashing down on you would have to give you some idea how much untapped enegy is out there.some habitats will be ineviatable through construction of the Severn barrage and similar projects.
No.5
Bring forward plans to phase out ‘standby’ modes on all household electrical equipment. consider other practical measures like turning off street lamps outside city centres between the hours of 1am and 5am….it would be nice to see the stars again don t you think?
No6
Roll back the Environment Agencies (HA!) red tape to set up micro hydro schemes. Such schmes should be granted based upon a simple inspection and common sense not a mountain of red tape and consultancies / permissions required at the moment that costs more to resolve than installing the micro hydro power scheme.
One has to ask if the powers that be are genuinly interested in renewables why does the government make it so proceeduraly difficult? Are the power companies lobbying in the background for this legislation to keep their power profits going?
No.7
All new homes required to meet hugely increased effciency ratings including the use of new car battery technology to store surplus energy from any activity from a sunny day to your exercise bike to a mini bio methane plant for your food scraps could feed into it.
It just seems to me that only lip service is being paid to renewables, there is too much money in other forms of power and I suspect they are stealthyly slowing the implementation of renewable energy down?
Anybody know?
Got any suggestions?
Join the debate..if they are supported they will be added.
Contact your local elected officials - for free
by goldtop
15 Jul 2009 at 14:24
Its curious that nuclear power is being talked up as the solution to our energy problems once again. Removal of nuclear power stations was one of the key issues for enviromentalists for decades.
How times change…
by Nick Taylor
18 Jul 2009 at 16:00
Well, to be honest, things haven’t changed – it’s just that the pro-nuke lobby have jumped on the fact that it doesn’t produce carbon to claim (lying as the pro-nuke lobby always does), that it’s clean. It isn’t – nuke waste currently costs the UK taxpayer a billion a year to store… and there’s no end in site. This is an overhead you’re going to be passing on to your kids, and what do they get for it?
Nuclear is still a very bad idea for about 5 very good reasons. Waste is just one of them.
If this is a pro-nuke group, then I’m off. It’s like the death penalty. It’s not even on the table.
by Berko
18 Jul 2009 at 17:02
What about developing policies for reducing energy use itself?
Surely there is scope for some ingenious thinking from the minds on here. It seems the simplest step in the rightdirection.
A commitment to lower/total energy consumption as well as lowering emissions – could that do much harm?
by Nick Taylor
18 Jul 2009 at 17:12
Well quite.
60% of the energy we’re currently creating from centralised power stations goes straight up as heat – at source and in transmission. I’m not sure what the total losses are, but you’re probably looking at a formula which looks something like
1 watt of energy saved at your house, saves 100 watts at the power station.
Small downstream savings lead to much larger upstream savings.
by Jericoa
18 Jul 2009 at 20:29
Please feel free to suggest something along those lines. It is no more a pro nuke site as it is a pro ‘free loft insulation’ site.
It is not an area I know a great deal about so feel free to suggest some additions. I had to start somewhere.
I just happen to be pro nuclear at the moment … possibly out of ignorance.. I am happy to admit that. I see it from the perspective of its security ( dont rely on / support dodgy states and non renewable resources for energy) and if it is managed properly it seems to have a good safety record. France seems to have made a success of it.
Nuclear debate aside it seems entirely sensible to me to start with more energy efficient homes.
I am vaguely aware that in the EU incandescent bulbs are being phased out, as are ‘standby modes’ on electronic equipment and the like.
Is it possible to go much further much faster?
I dont know I am looking for ideas here and as soon as they appear they will be added to the manifesto to debate further. Similarly nuclear will be taken off if there is enough support for that.
Join the debate.
by Jericoa
20 Jul 2009 at 23:10
The above manifesto point has been changed to Rev 1.0 in response to Nick Taylors challenge to the use of nuclear energy. He certainly put the doubt in my mind so it is being thrown out there again as I clearly dont know what I am talking about on this matter!
Over to you guys.
by goldtop
26 Jul 2009 at 16:08
I would have thought the waste issue alone would make nuclear power a no-no.
I’d prefer clean alternatives- I think we all would- so why don’t we start compiling a list of options and take an honest look at how practical they are?
by Jericoa
26 Jul 2009 at 17:26
I kind of suspect if we put the effort into mass production of items which promote more efficient use of energy or generate more energy the oil and gas and nuclear cartel would be weakened substantially. would we really miss them?
I suppose the options would be those which could attract government subsidies and / or could pay for themselves in a short period of time.
I came accross an interesting fact recently why solar is not used so much. One of the main reasons is because the solar panells create DC electricity, which is then converted ( with a huge efficiency loss) into AC to pass into the buildings electrical system. Then what happens?
It gets converted back to DC via another energy guzzling transformer before it goes into the back of your computer. Something like 40% of the energy is lost in that stupid double handling of the energy.
Some modern buildings now are being installed with a parallel DC electrical system so that the solar cell energy goes straight to DC storage (a battery) then into the computers and monitors etc.
All of a sudden those solar cells are economic because you are not wasting most of the energy converting it back and forth through an AC transmission system….
by goldtop
27 Jul 2009 at 09:19
That would make sense. DC current is difficult to transmit over long distances so a central DC power plant would be useless as most of it would be lost during distribution.
by johnbray
29 Jul 2009 at 22:13
Developing nuclear is a pointless exercise simply because there are not enough raw materials such as Uranium to last. We’ve used the stuff faster than mother nature can produce it – or at least where it’s economically viable to get at. Same goes for oil/gas/coal.
So that pretty much leaves us with only water, wind, sun and plants (wood/biomass) to choose from in the future for our energy.
Each has its pros and cons but – as with nuclear – they are pretty irrelevant if it’s not practical to get the energy to where it is needed (or even wanted).
Discarding plants (wood/biomass) for the moment – after all the UK cannot even feed itself at the moment – the others have mainly applications is generation of electrical energy. This energy needs to be transmitted and/or stored for later use.
Something else we can dismiss as an irrelevance is storage because batteries are of no serious use for anything above the domestic scale.
So, as long as we can distribute all this “free” energy then all will be well!
We just need enough steel for the pylons, concrete to plant them in, alumiminium for the transmission cables and copper close to the end users and the job is sorted.
We could hope that the national grid will last for ever. Do you feel lucky?
Just few thousand tons of iron-ore, copper-ore, bauxite and limestone should do the trick. Obviously we’ll need a lot of machinery, fuel and energy to get it out of the ground, transport it half way around the world and process it. Oh dear – that’s all running out too!
People: you need to make sure that when the music stops you are close to a chair. Those who are not physically close to sources of food and energy when transport/transmission becomes a problem will be at a serious disadvantage.
Seems to me that the future will be local . . . . not global.
Sorry for being negative
)
by Jericoa
31 Jul 2009 at 20:53
Nice to hear from you again John,
I hope you are well the sun is hot the sangria is cold and the ‘good life’ remains good.
Back to business, i dont think there is an issue short term (certainly in our lifetimes) there is still an awful lot of coal about that you can make petrol out of as well as electricity etc etc etc if you really wanted to.
I am not saying it is a good idea to use it all, what i am saying is that we are not going to run out of the quantum of fossil fuel in its various forms any time soon.
In fact it should give us enough time to come up with something else like the holy grail of energy..nuclear fusion or something else ..who knows.
I think we should be more proactive about the transition and get alot more out of renewables than we do at the moment while simultaneosly simplyfying our lives collectively, working less and being happy with less and sharing more.
It need not be ‘boring’ either. There is plenty of existing and emerging technology to manage our darker side without acting it out for real by killing each other or whatever.
I am intrigued by the idea of thinking about how we can be honest about what we are and make much better use of the technology we now have.
As i have said many times, i get the distinct feeling that our technology (driven forward by the welth it produces) is now way ahead of our maturity as race.
I don’t suppose what ever I say will ever avoid humanity heading towards some avoidable calamity by cause of our own human nature, I just wish people would think about it a bit more so at least the impact will be reduced.
As a race we seem to be incredibly clever and incredibly stupid at the same time, not able to see that which is most obvious because it is so prevalent, who notices the wallpaper in thier own house acouple of weeks after it is put up.
by johnbray
02 Aug 2009 at 15:25
Jericoa, thanks for your interest and all is well in my personal enclave in the mountains. Energy is not a problem here at the moment and I agree that there should be enough to last my lifetime. Though – depending on how long I live – it might be a close run thing!
Nevertheless, rather than sitting smugly with wood to burn and sun, water and wind to harvest just ouside my door I just thought I’d spare a while giving some thought to those who may be a little less fortunate. I was curious about your comment on the plentiful coal out there so I did a bit of looking into it . . . . .
“the total world’s total coal reserves estimates that are commonly quoted are almost certainly erroneous in that there is no provision made for the economic feasibility of the production.” (The_Coal_Story.pdf – Energy Edge Limited 2004)
“Europe, including the EU, holds mainly lower-quality coal. This is due partly to unfavourable geology, but also to the long history of coal extraction in the industrialised EU countries. The majority of easy-to-recover hard coal reserves in the EU have already been exploited. Thus, the EU is today forced to opt either for expensive and technologically complicated underground extraction of high-quality coal at great depths, or for the exploitation of existing lower-quality reserves, or for imports of hard coal“. (Enerdata S.A., GlobalStat – April 2006 Database, 2006)
“On the basis that mines with less than four years minable reserves in 2016 would not be producing in 2020 nearly 9 mt/yr of deep mined capacity is potentially available in 2020” (UK Coal Production Prospects for 2008-16, Department of Trade and Industry, 2004 )
This is roughly only a third of what was being produced in 2004! And, at best, about half what the electricity generators alone will require (assuming thta all this coal is suitable for use in generators – which it is not).
Unfortunately, those with more coal than they (currently) need – the exporters – are a long way away.
“Australia is gradually becoming the ultimate global supplier of coal. Other traditional key exporters like South Africa, Indonesia and USA face significant challenges in the development of their coal reserves and export capabilities. The USA and China — former large net exporters — are gradually turning into large net importers with an enormous potential demand, together with India. By way of illustration, all of Australian steam coal exports are equal to only 5% of Chinese steam coal consumption. Exports from other possible large producers (Russia, Kazakhstan, Colombia) face substantial logistics problems.” (EUR22744EN.pdf – The Future of coal – European Commission, Institute for Energy, 2007
“Coal is the most carbon-intensive of all fossil fuels. Other things being equal, burning coal results in the largest CO2 and GHG emissions per generated unit of electricity“. (Energy Edge Ltd., Coal Marketing in Europe – Time to Look at Strategy)
Emission control regulation will only make infrastructure investments more unlikely (especially power plants, ports and railways)
So it seems to me that the UK will gradually be forced to go further afield for coal supplies just at the time when the cost of transporting it home gets prohibitive because of a shortage of cheap oil. Unlucky or what?
You say that “I dont think there is an issue short term“. Bearing in mind how much time it takes to plan, get permissions and build a power station (10 years?) and how long it must run to be sure of paying its way (30 years?) at what point in time would you say that it will become an issue worth thinking about?
by Jericoa
02 Aug 2009 at 16:40
John,
Interesting bit of research that, There are huge untapped coal reserves in certain parts of the world, but as you say they are rather in the wrong place for the ‘developed’ world!
I did an engineering feasibility report quite recently for a massive coal field and proposed huge power station in botswana close to the south africa border. There are coal seems several m thick (almost unheard of) and very close to the surface, i could not believe the extent of it. It is a massive reserve made feasible because it is within electricity transmission distance of south africa with its energy hungry bauxite smelters and the like.
I dont have figures to quote but i would have thought as a gut feel if we put the brakes on non-renewable consumption quickly enough we should be able to have enough residual fossil fuels to ‘plug the gap’ until some much higher yield clean renewable energy source comes along, be it fuasion or something we have not even heard of yet.
However we wont make if we keep expending jet fuel to fly grapes from chilli to the UK for goodness sake, its madness!
I dont know what the timing will be, I supect we will potentially have problems in our lifetimes (I am 39 by the way) but not insurmountable ones with the technology we have if we choose to use it sensibly and back off from the non-renewables.
Trouble is that is likely to stiffle economic growth a bit, which will be a bit of a shame for economists, economies, politicians and millions of people who will never be able to get a job as the current global economic model requires year on year economic growth to keep people in work.
Just got to keep plugging away and trying to raise awareness one person at a time as to what is really going on before the incumbent self interested governing elite totally stuff it up fopr everybody.
by johnbray
02 Aug 2009 at 18:26
The problem I have with renewables like wind/water/sun is that the energy they produce needs to be stored if it is not required immediately. To my mind, using surplus electricity to get hydrogen from water is the only hope of storing this economically. I can’t ever foresee “peak-water” occurring in the UK!
by Jericoa
03 Aug 2009 at 13:02
I think that is one of the options being developed to smooth out the availability / demand curve.
I see the future of renewabels as being in the ocean not in wind, I don’t think the energy of ocean currents or tides has been developed enough, it is also a field where the UK can lead the way due to our expertise in deep sea engineering (a legacy from north sea oil).
An equivalent size turbine in water gets 10 times more energy than one in air I read somewhere. There was an interesting idea to have turbines suspended from bridges over esturies for example to capture energy when the tide goes in and out, in other parts of the world there are ocean currents miles wide and 10s of m deep running at a fairly constant 15mph or more throughout the year, imagine the energy in that!
If we put even half the investment in human expertise into developing these as we do in defense spending or useless beurocracy or nuclear energy we could probably fix the world energy problem in 10 years, provide millions of jobs and lift millions more out of fuel poverty in sustainable way!!
Sound like a good idea anyone?
Helloooooo!!!
I wonder why we dont do the above?
Could it be becuase the energy companies and defence contractors and beaurocratic governments and banks think it may not be in their interests?
Surely not! That would be …well just terrible !!!…inhumane …a crime surely …
And i thought we lived in a democracy..just goes to show how sucessful they have been.
I read an interesting article on Russia recently, they think the only difference between the west and Russia is that in the west they are more subtly about how they control the population. The west preferes the approach of allowing the populus to believe they are free when they are not, Russia just tells it how it is…..
Champagne on mr Medelevs Yaght anyone?
George osbourne perhaps, how about Lord Mandelson?
by johnbray
04 Aug 2009 at 22:19
Jericoa, just a couple of quick points cos it’s late.
1: Oil and gas are essential for food – without pesticides and fertilizers life in the UK would be vastly different. Renewables won’t solve that.
2: I agree that water has huge energy potential but that energy still needs to be stored/transmitted/transported to the people who don’t live near water. And it needs to be available WHEN they want/need it.
by goldtop
06 Aug 2009 at 21:34
Could the following ever be possible or is it just a wild flight of SF fantasy? From the book A Man on the Moon by Andrew Chaikin-
“Houston based engineer David Criswell has designed solar power stations that could be set up on the moon and used to relay energy, in the form of microwaves, to receiving stations on earth. Manufactured from lunar materials, the first stations could produce 50 billion watts per year. Within 40 years, if more were built, they could provide a whopping 20 trillion watts- the energy budget of the entire planet. The cost would be enormous, perhaps just shy of a trillion dollars, but selling power to the earth at a modest ten cents per kilowatt hour, the venture could turn a profit after five years of operation”
Energy consumption figures and the estimated project costs are, I assume, 1994 levels (the year the book was published).
Its a pretty wild scheme. Food for thought though.
by johnbray
07 Aug 2009 at 22:40
So when exactly was it published – April the first 1994?
by Jericoa
08 Aug 2009 at 10:49
John,
Good point about the pesticides, i dont know for sure but i cant help but think that with enough energy we could mash the right molecules together somehow without having the convenience of them being readily available from oil by products. Those chemical enginneer can make pretty much what they want nowadays out of the raw elements surely?
GT, absolutely loved that idea even though it seems abit wacky!. I can see there may be problems with it but it is that kind of outside the box thinking we need now to ignite peoples excitement about something extraordinary.
Humanity just seems to have gone stale recently, there seems to be no ‘big discoveries’ out there and no exiting global engineering projects (like the moon shot) or ideological confrontations to promote thought (e.g. communism v capitalism).
We have the war with ancient entrenched doctrinal religion but that seems more like a quirk of history rather than a fundamental ideological issue although there are ideological aspects to it.
I need to try to keep things moving on and fresh so i may try to bring the ideas broadly agreed on thus far into a single manifesto doc. It may not seem like there has been huge debate but actually quite afew good ideas have come out of it already.
membership seems to keep ticking over slowly, i guess only a small proportion actually contribute.
just got to keep plugging away.
Keep the debate going guys.
by goldtop
08 Aug 2009 at 18:54
“So when exactly was it published – April the first 1994?”
Possibly- I’m not sure!
Its pretty out there I know. I found the concept fascinating though and he has written a paper about it for the American Institute of Physicists-
http://www.aip.org/tip/INPHFA/vol-8/iss-2/p12.pdf
by johnbray
11 Aug 2009 at 17:45
GT:
A wet and stormy day today so I’ve given this a bit of attention . . .
SAFETY:
His proposal “would deliver about 200 W to its local electric grid for every square meter of rectenna area.“. This is comparable with falls on the earth on average (see calculations below) and so so hopefully (if well controlled!) would not boil people’s innards. But this is only about two and a half times what can be achieved fom a good photovoltaics system so it’s not clear where the claim “surface area is 5% of the surface area that would be needed on . . . using the most advanced terrestrial solar-array technology” comes from. I’m not trying to defend photovoltaics here – just pointing out that maybe we should take a lot of this with a pinch of salt.
Admittedly it claims to be cheaper per kWh and would be more constant. Why bring land area into it? Especially when it’s admitted that a “safety-zone” would be needed around the receivers.
Would you want one at the bottom of your garden? Microwave safety limits are typically 10mW/cm^2 or less (= 100W/m^2). Would you trust someone to beam this level anywhere near your home from a quarter of a million miles away?
COSTINGS:
“Rectennas are projected to cost approximately $0.004/kWe•h, which is less than one-tenth of the current cost of most commercial electric energy.”
. . . 10bn people x $0.008 = $80m per hour or $700 billion p.a.
or about $20 trillion ($20,000,000,000,000) spread over 30 years
Where dos this “projected to cost” figure come from anyway??
The Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System quotes around $1 billion per GW for rectennas
=$1million per MW
=$1,000 per kW
= $0.004 ONLYif spread over 28.5 years usage
or
$1,000 bn per TW
= $20,000 bn for 20TW
= $2,000 for every person on the planet up front!
“If the cost of the lunar activities—including the design and building of a delivery system—is restricted to $0.001/kWe•h, . . .”
Does this mean another $500 per inhabitant of planet Earth – ie a further $5 trillion ??
He reckons that an orbiting version would require 300 million tonnes to be put into space for less than $60 a kilogram:
300,000,000kg @ $60/kg = $18 trillion. So his $5 trillion costing seems quite attractive.
Using his own calculation that “1 kg of facilities and components sent to the moon will return approximately 1,400 times as much energy to Earth as 1 kg of a solar-power satellite deployed from Earth.” then his system would only need 214 thousand tonnes sending to the Moon.
Then he also says “as much as $140,000/kg can be invested in establishing and operating the LSP facilities and components”
But 214 thousand tonnes @ $140,000/kg = $29,960,000,000,000, say $30 trillion. Surely some mistake!
Doesn’t add up to my mind. But then this was produced by a journalist (whose typical trade is in what is “interesting”) ie: they don’t normally let the facts get in the way of a good story. It was produced for physicists (who deal in what is possible) – and so they should. But I’m an engineer and also a natural sceptic so I’m more concerned with what is practical and also what’s more likely.
POLITICS:
Does the world really want the USA to have total control of it’s electricity supply?
EFFECTIVENESS:
The world’s population consumes about 500 quadrillion Btu of energy (about 150,000 terawatt-hours). Electricity usage is about 20,000 terawatt-hours but probably uses about 60,000 terawatt-hours to produce this (about 40% of total energy usage){Energy Information Administration” and International Energy Agency (IEA)}. Perhaps we shouldn’t overestimate the importance of electricity in the scheme of things. Even if we had an infinite supply of free electricity I still think we’d have plenty of problems.
A FINAL POINT:
Double-checking /criticism/ correction of calculations welcomed!
JB
Calculations:
A quad is a unit of energy equal to 1015 (a short-scale quadrillion) BTU, or 1.055 × 1018 joules (1.055 exajoules or EJ) in SI units.
293,071,000,000 Kilowatt-hours (kWh) or 293 TWh
The Earth receives 174 petawatts (PW) of incoming solar radiation (insolation) at the upper atmosphere. Approximately 30% is reflected back to space while the rest is absorbed by clouds, oceans and land masses.
The total solar energy absorbed by Earth’s atmosphere, oceans and land masses is approximately 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) per year.
= 439.5 exajoules (EJ) per hour
= 439,500 petajoules (PJ) per hour
= 439,500,000 terajoules (TJ) per hour
earth surface area = 510,072,000 km^2
. . . = 0.862 terajoules (TJ) per hour per km^2
= 862 gigajoules (GJ) per hour per km^2
= 862,000 Kilojoules (MJ) per hour per km^2
= 862,000,000 Joules (KJ) per hour per km^2
= 862,000,000,000 Joules (KJ) per hour per km^2
= 862,000 J per hour per square metre
1 kWh = 3,600,000J
1 kW = 3,600,000J/h
= 0.239 kW per square metre (on average throughout the world throughout the year)
= 239 W per square metre (on average throughout the world throughout the year)
Notes:
kilo- = 10^3
mega- = 10^6 (million)
giga- = 10^9 (billion)
tera- = 10^12 (trillion)
peta- = 10^15
exa- = 10^18
by Jericoa
11 Aug 2009 at 21:14
Hmmm John, I hope you did those calcs by candlelight.
You had me on trusting someone to beam microwaves back down to the planet accurately without all the calcs.. which i am not going to check by the way!
I still like the idea of thinking about such schemes, they are ( as you have proven) a lot of fun, if nothing else, to think about and often sensible proposals emerge from initial wacky ones.
We have to have a sensibly controlled population then we could get all our energy needs quite easily i think, its the exponential growth in people coupled with energy hungry technology that will do for us all.
There are a herd of elephants stomping around the room in pink tutus while we all examine the patterns on the wallpaper. The cultural issues will need to be tackled which has become taboo.
So what I am saying here is we are screwed basically!
Got an out house in your spanish hideaway John…will work for food.
by johnbray
11 Aug 2009 at 21:37
Jericoa, in the lifetime of humanity working for anything other than food and shelter is a fairly recent development.
Perhaps something for the manifesto could be to find out what the authorities are doing to ensure that food and shelter will still be available if energy runs out. Incentives/grants for R&D in renewables are all very well but there’s no guarantee it will pay off. What is the “Plan B” ??
by johnbray
11 Aug 2009 at 21:59
Looking on the bright side . . .
The Earth is given approximately 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) per year. Obviously it loses about the same each year – otherwise it would get hotter and hotter. Don’t get me started on global warming!
Nevertheless, some of this energy can be used on the way out. The World’s population only uses about 500 exajoules (EJ) per year (a quad is roughly equal to an exajoule (EJ). And most of this is probably on non-essential stuff.
So I’m confident that human life will go on – but in a different way.
A few thousand years ago what came into the land pretty much stayed on the land. Sun + water + land = food. The bears may well still shit in the woods but nowadays when people take a dump it goes far away. Same for potato peelings, dead leaves etc.
In short we’ve got out of the habit of using what we get for free efficiently – because when energy is so cheap and available why do anything physical?
by BobRocket
12 Aug 2009 at 00:18
Nucliare – non merci
If Iraq was about oil, anybody got any ideas why we are in Afghanistan ?
by BobRocket
12 Aug 2009 at 01:09
This time last year (my god was it only last year ?) petrol and derv hit about £1.35 per lt. (oil was ~150 USD/barrel which is what kicked off our current global economic woes, oil was hoovering up everybodies cash), the general punters whinged and moaned about the price but consumption remained mostly stable. The price was high, oil co.s made billions and we just paid the price (we did think about changing our habits) if the price at the pumps had hit £1.60 then some early adopters would have moved to some kind of alternative, at £1.80 a lot of people would be looking to move (making the alternatives cheaper), at £2.10 most people would ditch their current technology in favour of some kind of alternative.
Of course the superrich oil oligarchs with their superich banking buddies can’t allow that to happen.
Until we detach OUR government from the vested interests of Big Business (who have noones interests but their own) and make them subject to OUR will then we will be hostage to whatever energy policy suits them.
Sustainable – not for us, they simply don’t care about us, they use their inordinate wealth to define the agenda and restrict debate.
It really is straightforward, we have the fourth richest economy on the planet, we tell Shell, BP, Conoco, Exxon etc to play ball or we sequestrate their UK assets and kick them out – simple as – put a COCOMM on their foreign dealings and send a few execs (and bankers) to jail.
Get the Germans and the Japanese on board (no.s 2 and 3) (they are greener than us but lack imagination) and wait for cap and hand.
Realistically, all gov buildings that have energy management systems (most buildings after 1997) to put realtime consumption data online.
Spend some money upgrading the insulation on all houses where someone is drawing a pension.
Bit of a rant that one, must be worth threpence of anybodies money
by johnbray
12 Aug 2009 at 23:12
Bob,
Re: Afghanistan, maybe this is a clue. Or maybe this link. And some interesting food for thought can be found here (or should it be thought for food?)
by goldtop
13 Aug 2009 at 18:44
“If Iraq was about oil, anybody got any ideas why we are in Afghanistan?”
Being cannon fodder for the Americans as they try to save face.
by bobrocket
14 Aug 2009 at 00:43
It’s always about the money.
from Alexanders Gas and Oil
‘Some officials even said that Afghanistan has top-quality deposits of uranium in the southern province of Helmand and the Pamir plateau in the north, all discovered by the Russians in the 1960s. But they argued that the government has no plan to develop these deposits for the time being due to the sensitiveness of uranium, an essential material for nuclear weapons.’
I don’t know who Alexander is but this link from the British Geological Survey probably has more authority
by johnbray
14 Aug 2009 at 14:07
Regarding my post of August 11, 2009, 9:37 pm : “. . . find out what the authorities are doing to ensure that food and shelter will still be available if energy runs out. Incentives/grants for R&D in renewables are all very well but there’s no guarantee it will pay off. What is the “Plan B” ??”
. . . the answer may be found along the lines of transition towns. Personally, I think this should be Plan A – and should be included in the Manifesto.
How is the EDAP (Energy Descent Action Plan) progressing in your own community? Ask your MP/MEP/Councillor – surely he/she will know all about it!
by Jericoa
14 Aug 2009 at 20:27
Nice to see a lot of quality debate.
I do try to capture some of the ideas / consensus of discussion periodically but i am pushed for time at the moment. It does not have to be me though, if you wabnt to amend the manifestos and up the revision number please do so, we can always change it back again if the direction of debate takes it that way.
Grandma is looking after the kids tonight so I am off to the pub for a real ale then the cinema.
by johnbray
14 Aug 2009 at 21:02
Jericoa – “it does not have to be me though,” – fair point – JB
by goldtop
20 Aug 2009 at 17:35
“Does the world really want the USA to have total control of it’s electricity supply?”
I’m not personally keen on the USA having total control of anything…
by goldtop
27 Aug 2009 at 12:35
Artificial Trees to cut carbon?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8223528.stm
by goldtop
27 Aug 2009 at 16:10
Here is a serious study of sustainable energy, authored by a recognised authority (David MacKey, Professor of Physics at Cambridge). The whole book is available free as a download but first here is a 10 page synopsis-
http://www.withouthotair.com/synopsis10.pdf
by goldtop
27 Aug 2009 at 18:59
Hey, Jericoa
Someone who shares your view is talking about it (or at least talking about the fact that its not being talked about). Richard Black, BBC Environment Correspondent is plugging a broadcast on Radio 4 tonight called Climate Hijack. He says-
(tackling climate change is) “certainly more convenient than tackling the issues that underpin everything else, the size of the human population and our unsustainable consumption of the Earth’s resources”
He also goes on to quote someone called Jonathon Porritt who claims that a huge problem “is getting politicians and the wider environmental community to accept that underpinning everything are the unsustainable size of the Earth’s human population and our unsustainable (and rising) hunger for the Earth’s natural resources”
It is too controversial a subject to get people to even debate it he claims.
The full article is here-
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/8223611.stm
The programme is broadcast at 9PM tonight but will no doubt be on the listen again feature on the BBC website.
by Jericoa
01 Sep 2009 at 00:01
back from a brief holiday now, will check it out when i get chance, sounds like the truth to me though.
by Jericoa
01 Sep 2009 at 22:25
#36 Goldtop,
I just read the article, as suspected it had the whiff of reality about it as oppose to the mythological importance placed on the ‘climate change’ agenda.
I particularly liked the chinese official pointing out that their 1 child policy had prevented 400 million births and in so doing had contributed more to the environment than anybody else.
All this cultural sensitivity and taboo on cultural practises will be our downfall.
Those cultural practises were developed in a time when the human race was fighting for survival, principally against disease, apply the same principal to the modern world with antibiotics and an understanding of disease and disease control and it swings the other way and produces conditions where we could quite possibly trash our planet and condemn generations to unecesarry suffering.
When it is done for the greater good and has solid reasoning behind it and is approached in that way it is not racism to suggest certain cultural practises are wrong and to curtail them it is a global survival and quality of life neccesity.
A good starting point would be the Catholic church, they no doubt do a lot of work that is good but concerning population control and preservation of the planet they are doing immense damage and should be taken to task by the force of a sustained attack on their rationale.
The sensitivity seems to come from the notion that culture is critically important and must be respected no matter what. hence we have rape victims stoned to death in some countries for ‘infidelity’ and babies galore which we can keep free of disease now through technology but we have to trash the planet to feed them all.
This is not about putting people of certain religions etc in ghettos etc (god forbid) it is about making those cultural practises face up to the changed reality that is the modern world.
An alien looking down on us would surely think we have collectively lost our senses.
By all means keep the cultural practises and traditions that make the world diverse and interesting but for Gods sake lets lose the crap we dont need anymore.
All it would take in the catholic church’s case is a decree from the pope, a few words to ease the quantum of suffering of millions!!! They changed their mind about the Earth going around the sun (eventually after much threats and torture to deny what reason was telling them) it is not as if this is anything new for them to change their interperetation of the holy scriptures in the face of new scientific fact so why the hell wont they do it for population now that we now know better!!
Jeeeze !!!!! what a bunch of chumps