by Alex Evans | Jun 26, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity
Day 2. Danish Foreign Secretary Per Stig Møller explains that Denmark is not investing in nuclear power stations because there’s no long term solution to the waste problem. But, interjects a feisty member of the audience, in that case why is Denmark investing in carbon capture and storage – which, she says, is toxic too?
Moller disputes that carbon dioxide is a poison; audience member retorts that yes it is, people died in Canada when a volcano erupted and CO2 concentrations in the air became too high. Back and forth the squabble goes.
But the toxicity point is a red herring. More interesting, surely, is that an unplanned, large scale release of CO2 storage fields is potentially just as hazardous as nuclear waste. So why is one a risk that can be managed effectively over the very long term, and not the other?
by David Steven | Jun 25, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity
Paul Golby, CEO of power major, E:ON, is hot under the collar about the lumbering nature of the British planning system.
Case-in-point: the London Array, an offshore wind farm which will produce enough power to supply quarter of Greater London’s needs – 750,000 homes.
The scheme got all its planning permission, apart from for a small substation where the power comes ashore. Swale Borough Council, acting against its own officers’ advice, wasn’t having any of that.
According to the Council’s CEO:
“Of course we need to be more self-sufficient in energy and Kent needs the jobs that such a major investment would bring, but members of our Planning Committee were right to put the interests of our constituents first over the undoubted national and regional advantages, because the people of Graveney will have to live with the adverse consequences of this investment for a considerable period of time. The Committee was not reassured that London Array had done enough to ease those negative impacts on the local community.”
by Alex Evans | Jun 25, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity
Emma Duncan, deputy editor of The Economist, has a nice graph showing the abatement costs of various different technology options. Over on the left hand side the cheapest – as usual – are various energy efficiency options that, like loft insulation, are cheaper than free, in that they save you money.
So why aren’t all these mitigation options already installed? In a word, because people aren’t always rational. Often, like me, they’re lazy and can’t be bothered with the hassle of having to stay home for a day to spend five hundred quid on having the loft done – when it will take years to recoup the cost of the investment.
Which begs the question: why have power companies still not managed to figure out a way of selling domestic heat and power as a service rather than as a commodity? I worked as a think tank research fellow on UK energy policy four years ago, and even then it seemed clear that this was where the debate needed to go.
Well, maybe things will finally move if Gordon Brown moves energy over to the Department of the Environment…
by David Steven | Jun 25, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity
We’re talking about leadership…
John Llewellyn, Senior Economic Policy Adviser for Lehman Brothers, makes the case for economic incentives. Exhortation, he says, won’t work.
If he’s right (and accepting that unchecked climate change will be disastrous), then I think it’s fair to say that the world is stuffed.
Because something has to come before incentives – the decision by a hundred or so leaders to apply those incentives, and the decision by a few billion voters to support their government’s actions.
That will require an awful lot of exhortation. And it’s also where we’re flying blind. (more…)
by Alex Evans | Jun 25, 2007 | Climate and resource scarcity, Global system, Influence and networks
From my old colleague Nick Mabey‘s presentation: a comparison of two competing narratives about future action.
The Stern Review is in no doubt that the cost benefit analysis is clear: we must act now! The damages will cost 5-25% of future GDP; future costs should be valued highly; the low carbon economy is pretty cheap to install.
Not a bit of it, says the IPCC. Future damages will only cost 5% of future GDP! And in any case, future costs are just a question of current preferences. And the low carbon economy is actually very expensive, too. The cost benefit analysis is clear: there is no optimum level for stabilisation!
In fact, Mabey argues, neither narrative is setting the debate. Instead, it’s the ‘energy security tribe’ who run the dominant discourse and are actually shaping energy markets, with their story of pipeline politics and security of supply. As for price signals through emissions trading or climate policy, right now that signal can’t even be heard by markets over the much louder noise of energy market fundamentals…
