The green bait-and-switch

1944

the-green-bait-and-switch

In the US many environmentalists are getting infected with the NIMBY-virus* as they realize the unpleasant consequences of renewable energy. New projects, such as the 240-mile transmission line through Indiana to accommodate wind farms (at a cost of $1bn), are unlikely to be completed any time soon. The reason for this is burdensome government regulation and lots of anticipated NIMBY litigation. So much for the green lobby’s urgency argument with regard to global warming:

To wit, the greens are blocking the very transmission network needed for renewable electricity to move throughout the economy. The best sites for wind and solar energy happen to be in the sticks -- in the desert Southwest where sunlight is most intense for longest, or the plains where the wind blows most often….In addition to other technical problems, the transmission gap is a big reason wind only provides two-thirds of 1% of electricity generated in the U.S., and solar one-tenth of 1%.

Protesters in California are blocking transmission lines between solar and geothermal fields in the Imperial Valley and Los Angeles and green lobbyists are obstructing a 150-mile link from solar panels to serve San Diego. Former Hummer addict and hastily baptized eco-warrior Arnold Schwarzenegger pointed out the obvious:

It's kind of schizophrenic behavior... They say that we want renewable energy, but we don't want you to put it anywhere.

Similar melodramas are playing out in Oregon, Arizona, the Dakotas, the Carolinas, Tennessee, West Virginia, northern Maine, and even upstate New York. It’s a nice irony to learn that the only people able to crush this green energy scam are the environmentalists themselves.

* NIMBY = "not in my backyard"

Letting in water

1919

letting-in-water

It seems that Lord Smith, Chairman of the Environment Agency has created a stir – especially for those that live near coast. In an interview with The Independent he said, "We are almost certainly not going to be able to defend absolutely every bit of coast – it would simply be an impossible task both in financial terms and engineering terms."

He's right. As the government isn't exclusively utilizing money from taxpayers who live on the cliff edge, or below sea level, it has to consider these things in the most cost beneficial way. And that means some houses will fall into the sea.

Of course this leads to cries of, "it's not fair" and "you should be doing something to stop the erosion." Or, in the case of this Telegraph article, seeking to apportion blame at the door of those who have an emotional attachment to our feathered brethren, or the EU.

If farmers and homeowners in East Anglia and parts of the South East want to protect their land, and the state won't help them, then they should do it themselves, whether individually or as communities. And they should ignore whatever the state may say or do to make that difficult – it is their property, after all.

Of course, if the environmental protection of these lands had not been centralized, and the risk of living or farming there had not been socialized, we wouldn't find ourselves in this situation. People would have taken out private insurance, taken steps to protect their property, or moved elsewhere.

In the current circumstances, however, it is surely fair that those that seek to protect their land should be compensated for being forced to pay for a system (through their taxes) that was founded on false pretences. Scrapping the Environment Agency could free up some useful money.

For now though, coastal dwellers will either be lucky enough to live in a Labour-voting constituency (where the taxpayer-funded flood defences will no doubt materialise) or be forced to retreat to higher ground.

In defence of road pricing

1905

in-defence-of-road-pricing

According to the Daily Telegraph, road pricing is back on the government's agenda.

Quite right. We pay differently for the particular dishes we order in restaurants – so why do we not pay differently for the particular road space we occupy? If we order caviar, we expect to pay more than if we order cod roe. If we choose to drive into town at peak weekday times, we should expect to pay more than if we drive on some wide-open rural road on a Sunday afternoon.

If restaurant meals were funded out of taxation, we'd all be ordering the caviar, and there would be a chronic shortage. And it's because we pay for roads through a standards 50p-a-litre fuel tax that we all want to drive into town at 8.45am on a Monday – causing traffic chaos for everyone, extra costs for hauliers, not to mention extra noise, pollution and accidents as we stop-start in queues.

Road pricing would make people aware of the value of our roads – indeed, of the value of specific roads at specific times. As such, it would encourage people to use them more sparingly. And it prompt planners to put new roads where motorists were demonstrating their willingness to pay, rather than where politicians demanded some vote – catching white-elephant infrastructure.

But the public just don't trust politicians to make road pricing fair. That's why a million people signed a petition opposing it. They think the charge will be a new tax, not a replacement for car and fuel taxes. They don't believe that the authorities will invest in alternatives to using the car (like better public transport). They don't trust politicians with the data or where and when they drive.

The only solution, if we are to curb congestion, is to put the roads into the hands of independent roads trusts - rather like was imagined when the 'road fund tax' on cars was first introduced. Ensure the trust or trusts provide alternatives to those who want to avoid the charge by leaving the car at home. Let them spend revenues on where drivers demonstrate their willingness to pay for access, rather than on what officials think is good for us. Maybe that would restore trust, and get the traffic moving freely at last.

Towers in the sky

1870

towers-in-the-sky

So, the Prince of Wales has decided to speak out against GM crops, blaming them for pretty much everything. I have written before against the doomsday lunacy that GM crops provokes. With this latest officious dabble in politics, the Prince of Wales has put himself at the movement’s vanguard.

From his ivory tower, the Prince is able to make the comment: "Look at India's Green Revolution. It worked for a short time but now the price is being paid". What price is that exactly? For the people of the Punjab, there has been a decline in poverty by 11.52% between 2002 and 2005.

Of course, protecting the environment is important and the Prince’s project to save rainforests is on the whole a noble cause. Yet he fails to see that protecting the environment is where GM crops do so well, as they require far fewer pesticides to return high yields. Thus, GM crops allow practices closer to the Princes own Highgrove estate. Also, for the carbon-crazed: “GM crops need to be tilled less and sprayed less, cutting tractors' fuel use and reducing the impact of greenhouse gas emissions. In 2006 alone, the permanent carbon dioxide savings from reduced fuel consumption since the introduction of GM crops was equal to removing 25 per cent of cars from Britain's roads for a year."

Progress is not a simple thing. GM crops will not save the world from all the challenges that will be faced. However, they have and will continue to save the lives of countless millions of people from starvation. After all, Horace was quite wrong. Pale death does not knock at the hut of the poor and the towers of kings with impartial step.

Don't hold your breath

1866

dont-hold-your-breath

As early as 1992, the Adam Smith Institute propagated the use of marketable permits for tackling high CO2 emissions (see Rethinking the Environment). This cap and trade system means that while the government has limited the overall value of emissions, firms (polluters) can trade their pollution permits. The incentive to reduce emissions is created by the cost of buying extra permits and selling your surplus if you are more efficient.

So only 13 years later, the EU entered Phase I (2005-2007) of its Emissions Trading System that sought to do just that. Over the same time period CO2 emissions in the EU rose 1.9 %. Why does the market approach appear to have failed?

Firstly, Phase I only covered a two year period; it takes time for firms to invest in more efficient methods of production and consequently reap the benefits of lower CO2 output.

Secondly, the scheme only applied to installations in the energy and industry sectors which accounted for less than half of the EU‚s emissions of CO2. In other words, the emissions trading system was not able to have its full effect.

Thirdly, the ETS was subject to lobbying and mismanagement by the EU and its member states. They allowed far too many permits to be issued, and of those only 5% were auctioned, the rest being freely allocated. This is evident in the price of allowances- from April 2006 to September 2007, it fell from •30 per tonne of CO2 to •0.10. The result: the incentive to reduce emissions vanishes.

Now in 2008 as Phase II begins, the EU has decided that it, and not the member states will allocate the emissions caps- the caps themselves will be lowered and more permits auctioned. Also, coverage of the scheme will increase to contain aluminium and ammonium producers, and, by 2010, the aviation industry. But don't hold your breath. The EU will be just as vulnerable to lobbyists as its members making overallocation just as likely. And increasing the proportion of permits auctioned from 5% to 7% is less of a step in the right direction, and more of a snail's pace.

Instead, lowering the caps to a more effective level and auctioning them all will better reflect the ideas that were suggested 16 years ago, and in the long run will help to vindicate a market based approach to the environment.

Just what are the UK's carbon emissions?

1852

just-what-are-the-uks-carbon-emissions

A slightly odd (and definitely geeky) thing to do but I'm going to praise some environmental research that has just been published. Yes, even something from the Stockholm Environment Institute. (Summary here, full report here.) Whether their calculations are entirely correct or not isn't my point: it's that they are trying to answer an interesting question.

A little background. There are, over and above the way that the UN and IPCC measure emissions two others in common usage. The first is producer emissions: add up all the CO2 (actually, CO2-e but never mind) emissions in a country. But that doesn't take account of imports and exports. OK, so thee's another measure: consumer emissions. This adds in to what is produced in the UK what is embodied in the things we import. However, in one of those remarkable twists of the way in which statistics are defined, such consumer numbers do not take account of the CO2 embedded in what we export....those emissions clearly being associated with the consumption habits of those in other countries rather than our own. It's not really all that much of a surprise that there are those who like to quote this latter number, despite the clear and obvious double counting.

What the new report tries to do is estimate the real balance. How much CO2 is embedded in what we import and how much in what we export (and yes, they look at re-exports too)? So that we can come up with a number that truly reflects the emissions from our consumption.

It's not really a surprise that our consumption emissions are higher than our production ones. Firstly, we run a large trade deficit on goods so we obviously import more "things" than export them. Secondly, our goods exports tend to be high value added items (jet engines say) rather than physical resource or energy intensive ones (aluminium say) so again we'd expect to be importing more CO2 than exporting. Finally, we're one of the world's great exporters of services rather than goods and yes, there's less CO2 embedded in the former than the latter.

So, yes, our consumption numbers are higher than our production ones: for we're a high tech, services orientated economy. So far so geeky and perhaps not all that interesting. However, now that we've got the distinctions between the various statistics out of the way we can keep a sharp eye open for those who would misuse them. Using the trade adjusted consumer numbers the report says that:

...rather than going down by 5 per cent, as ministers claimed, CO2 emissions have gone up 18 per cent between 1992 and 2004 when all emissions are counted.

However, there's another report coming from the same source soon:

An SEI report to be published soon by the campaign group WWF will suggest that the UK's total greenhouse gas emissions are 49 per cent higher than reported.

I wonder what definition that will use? Consumer perhaps, unadjusted for exports?

But Stuart Bond, WWF's head of research, said: "This shows our claims on emissions are simply a big lie."

Could be Stuart, could be, we'll judge your claims on that lies, damned lies and statistics spectrum when you release your report, shall we?

Noisy hybrids

1844

noisy-hybrids

Hybrid cars are getting another update: “the roar of the traditional combustion engine". In The Independent this week, an article explained that Lotus was developing technology to make hybrid engines louder.

Really? More noise? I thought that was one of the perks of getting a hybrid car: an eco-friendly, noiseless ride to work. Not to mention reducing noise pollution in the streets – a wonderful positive externality to be enjoyed by others.

I know groups have come forth with complaints about the safety of blind and partially sighted pedestrians because they might not hear a hybrid car coming, but putting money and energy into developing noise when the time could be better spent on developing better efficiency is silly.

However, since there seems to be a demand for this sort of thing, I am not one to fight against the market. I was just looking forward to the day when the silent hybrid ruled the world and I didn’t hear every car that passed my bedroom window.

The return of Arthur Scargill

1839

the-return-of-arthur-scargill

Quite like old times as Arthur Scargill returns to The Guardian to tell us that coal is the answer to all our problems. If only we employed hundreds of thousands to work underground, banned all foreign coal imports, then we could power the entire island from coal and renewables and all live happily ever after.

Well, yes, although there's a certain amount of wishful thinking there. This can all be done without harming the environment apparently: clean coal technology is sufficiently advanced that not only will there be no particularate pollution but we're able to capture all of the CO2 as well. Slightly unfortunate to have to point out that, at least with present technology, no we can't. No one really thinks we ever will be able to either. We think we might be able to capture some of it, perhaps even a majority, but not all. Further, no one has even built a decent sized demonstration plant yet, let alone a commercial pilot, so we've really no idea how much it is likely to cost either.

But the really breathtaking claim is the one that coal is better than nuclear. For of course, the biggest challenger to coal for baseload electricty production is indeed nucelar power: so out comes the boogieman of radiation.

Is he unaware that there is no known way of disposing of nuclear waste, which will contaminate the planet for thousands of years?

There are ways known: vitrification and burying it are known to work, the barriers being political not technological. But it's most unwise for those championing King Coal to start talking about radioactivity for a rather different reason:

A 1,000 MW coal-burning power plant could release as much as 5.2 tons/year of uranium (containing 74 pounds (34 kg) of uranium-235) and 12.8 tons/year of thorium. The radioactive emission from this coal power plant is 100 times greater than a comparable nuclear power plant with the same electrical output; including processing output, the coal power plant's radiation output is over 3 times greater.

Poor old Arthur. His problem always was that his worldview didn't actually coincide with reality, wasn't it?

Dehumanising society

1806

dehumanising-society

Violent surprise attacks on unsuspecting citizens in their own home are a feature of totalitarian states, and were used to intimidate dissidents in Nazi-Germany and in Stalin's USSR. But for some time now scientists in the West have been falling victim to such storm trooper assaults perpetrated by animal right activists. As in the UK, US Scientists and their families have been horrified and severely traumatised. According to the Washington Times:

Over the past couple of years, more researchers who experiment on animals have been harassed and terrorized in their homes, with weapons that include firebombs, flooding and acid… These attacks have been escalating in recent years: The Washington-based Foundation for Biomedical Research said researchers were harassed or otherwise victimized more than 70 times in 2003, up from 10 a year earlier.

To be sure, people who are concerned in non-violent ways to protect animals from harm have been around for centuries. But these eco-terrorists are a different bunch. Jerry Vlasak, who speaks for the US Animal Liberation Front, says: "if you had to hurt somebody or intimidate them or kill them, it would be morally justifiable." This is a rhetoric that dehumanises our society in another bout of egalitarian furore, which is aiming at the gradual levelling of the animal and the human world. It is in this context that we should look at the Spanish parliament. For it is the first to deal with the international Great Ape project, which attempts to impose human rights on certain monkeys.

Scrubbing out carbon dioxide

1780

scrubbing-out-carbon-dioxide

Sound environmental policy or eco-ideology? In some countries hardcore environmentalists still resist nuclear power despite it being the most economically clean and truly sustainable energy option available. It also allows us to avoid stifling oil–dependence and additional pollution of the atmosphere. Those opposed to utilizing nuclear have of course dramatically over emphasized any potential problems that it may harbour. So rather than alleviating atmospheric pollution it leaves it at the mercy of the economically illiterate carbon–trading schemes. Similarly environmental activists, such as Greenpeace, have also resisted technologies like carbon capture and sequestration, exposing themselves to the accusation of being 21st Century Luddites. This increasingly compromises their credibility as environmentally responsible citizens.

Now environmentalists are giving us yet another example of imprudent opposition to new technology. Scientists at Columbia University are developing a new appliance called the carbon dioxide (CO₂) scrubber. In as single day alone it can remove a ton of CO₂ from the air. Speaking for the research team Klaus Lackner guesses that this device could prove an efficient way to minimize the atmospheric CO₂ levels:

While some see the scrubber as an efficient and economical way to reduce atmospheric carbon dioxide, many environmentalists are opposing the technology because it allows people to use fossil fuels and emit carbon in the first place.

After decades of investment renewable energies have yet to deliver their required cost-effectiveness. Therefore it is not prudent to flat-out reject other technological solutions which are often much cheaper than reducing CO₂ emissions at the source. This whole issue of green campaigning reeks of special interest groups and doesn’t reflect the pursuit of the noble cause of saving our planet.