Energy – Employment, Energy and Environment

The Case for a New Community Energy Revolution

Neil Barnes is lead for Linlith-Go-Solar & Voluntary Trustee of Linlithgow Community Development Trust. In this post he makes the case for a new Scottish Community Energy Partnership. The post raises lots of issues. How do you win hearts and minds? How do you make the links with the immediate issues of fuel poverty and the cost of living crisis? How can community energy deliver renewable energy at the scale that is demanded by the climate crisis? And how does community generation intersect with the need for public ownership and public investment though a national energy company which we at ScotE3 advocate? We welcome responses to all these questions and to Neil’s article.

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Have we reached a pivotal moment in our modern history to radically change the course in how energy is developed, delivered and managed in Scotland, the UK and other parts of the world?

Is the case for community-owned renewable energy and storage systems now overwhelming?

Millions more homes across the land have just been plunged into fuel poverty through no fault of their own. Our energy market is broken.

Despite the vast resources of renewable energy at our disposal – particularly solar which globally can provide more than 80 times what we need with existing technologies – we continue to rely on fossil fuels for so much of our energy supply to every rational scientist’s incredulity. In 2021, we used more fossil fuel than at any point in our history. We even set market prices for grid electricity on the price of gas-fired generation for the additional electricity required when renewables are in short supply. A key reason why the terrible invasion of Ukraine has been so damaging – especially the poorest families – as we continue to rely on gas for heating and a significant proportion of our electricity generation in power stations. Even though we know the incontrovertible fact that renewable energy (particularly land wind and solar) is cheaper to deliver. It has been for years.

As if that wasn’t bad enough, we march inexorably to climate catastrophe and the end of a viable biosphere than can maintain life as we know it.

Nevertheless, there is hope.

Did you know that when communities own their renewable energy generating systems, they could be earning as much as 30 times the revenue compared with commercial developers?

Point and Sandwick Trust (Outer Hebrides islands in Scotland) is a case in point, where they earn £170k per MW of wind turbine power installed, compared to £5k, or 34 times the community benefit generated from their wind farm compared to what they would get if led by a commercial developer.

Wind turbine just outside Lerwick image by Pete Cannell CC0

There are now over 1900 ‘official’ or constituted community energy cooperatives across Europe according to REScoop.eu. The majority are not only earning more for their communities than commercially developed systems, but they are also providing ethical investment opportunities for local people and wider populations enjoying decent but ‘ethical’ rates of interest.

What’s more, where they are in power purchase agreements (or PPAs) with building owners or tenants using the renewable electricity (or heat in some instances) they can keep energy prices lower than the National Grid because they have fewer overheads to pay.

Such local energy schemes can also pin any price increases lower than energy inflation whilst undertaking fair and friendly negotiations directly with customers. Beating the general rates of inflation is particularly easy now given the recent and humungous hikes in energy prices. Such eye-watering increases are forcing people to switch off. We’ve heard of householders reopening open coal fires and chimneys, foraging for local wood supplies and even burning furniture and clothes. The authorities and fire services are worried about an increase in domestic fires and fatalities too. This is also making it harder and harder for small businesses to survive. One in seven could go bust.

The winter of 2022 might be like no other in living memory.

Here in our wee town of Linlithgow, West Lothian, in 2019, our local community development trust started a small energy enterprise with big ambitions. Through ‘Linlith-Go-Solar’ we have installed 5 Solar PV systems in 3 local community sports clubs that have cut carbon emissions, reduced electricity costs by at least 15%, and provided an affordable ethical investment opportunity for local people. We now generate a modest amount of surplus that we reinvest into further community benefits, including educational initiatives.

Image by Ulrike Leone from Pixabay CC0

The core of our model is a ‘Power Purchase Agreement’ (PPA). Indeed we all have one of these as bill payers to our utility suppliers. The ‘PPA’ price we charge the clubs for using our solar electricity is below 14p/kWh. It was only raised by 1.8% this year. A fraction of current energy inflation. And we are highly unlikely to see increases beyond that sort of level throughout the 25-year lifespan of the solar panels.

Whereas your domestic and business electricity tariffs are now moving upwards of 25 p/kWh. We have recently heard of a commercial price as high as 61 p/kWh!

Of course, there are many other factors to take into consideration and energy prices are made up of different components that a micro-supplier doesn’t face, such as network charges. But we at Linlith-Go-Solar also had significant upfront development and capital costs that means paying back bond holders with interest, as well as ongoing maintenance, metering subscription, insurance and contingencies, e.g. inverter replacement, before making surplus.

So a like-for-like comparison is still probably unfair to a great degree. Nevertheless, if we consider the vast sums that we as taxpayers and customers have already paid into the National Grid infrastructure and the enormous fossil fuel subsidies that persist, perhaps our comparison might not be wildly outside the realms of logic. Caroline Lucas MP of the UK Green Party has regularly posted on social media that fossil fuel subsidies and tax break in the UK are 9 times the rate for renewable energy. Utter folly.

On the moral front, many in the environmental campaigning sector believe it’s down to sheer avarice, if not corruption, from the large fossil fuel generators. Gas prices were rising before the Russians invaded Ukraine. Watch the recent BBC documentary: “Big oil Versus the World”. The level of disinformation and deception is startling. Rational scientists have been left feeling powerless.

Nevertheless, with the political will and right support at grassroots level, we could begin to turn the oil tanker.

In local community-owned energy projects, the community itself can decide how any surplus can be reinvested back into local community benefits. So not only are we saving carbon, we are making communities more economically resilient. The ‘multiplier’ effect means that each pound reinvested attracts at least another, and spent in the locality, and this will further benefit local people building new projects, services & assets. A social return on investment assessment would no doubt reveal even more added value for communities.

We appreciate the significant strides in greening the UK and particularly the electricity supplying the Scottish National Grid through wind, hydro and solar. It reached 98% last year. So some might question whether the carbon saving is really worth the bother. Given the embedded energy in the National Grid, the fact that in Scotland we still import fossil-fuel fired power when the wind isn’t blowing, and the knowledge that Solar PV panels, for example, will provide at least 4 times, in some cases up to 30 times, the electricity over their useful lifetime of 25 years or more, compared to the energy consumed in their manufacture (and we are not blind to other environmental impacts they might cause in other parts of the world) suggests more carbon will be saved for the foreseeable future. It should also be noted that Solar PV panels are continually improving in efficiency and alternatives, including Perovskite (a potentially more efficient replacement for silicon-based panels), solar film, solar glass and solar car ports now popping up in local neighbourhoods like the one at Falkirk FC Stadium 10 miles from Linlithgow.

Electricity demand is still rising too, around 3% per year on average, especially with the advent of Electric Vehicles, and the exponential rise in sales globally. So for some ‘District Network Operators’, the cost of reinforcing the grid and for generators to build more power stations (and many countries are still blindly bringing new fossil fuel plants online) will be prohibitive. In some places where there are constraints on the grid capacity, renewables and other power generators are forced to inhibit supply when we should be storing the surplus green energy in hydro, heat and electric batteries. This must be part of the new community energy revolution and rapid shift to come.

Scottish Power Energy Networks, who operate and manage the grid transmission and distribution in southern Scotland and elsewhere, even have their own Community Energy Strategy and have invested millions in local embedded community energy projects, including Solar PV, battery storage and green transport because they understand the strong local sustainable economic and environmental case. Linlith-Go-Solar benefited from this through Local Energy Scotland’s astute initiative in the 2^nd phase of our enterprise. SPEN have just launched their Transmission Net Zero Fund for local communities, a successor to their successful Green Economy Fund, which community groups, charities and the like can apply for in their transmission area.

However, there is a rather sizeable ‘but’.

Even though the facts about the local and global benefits of community energy are clear, the sad fact is that it makes up less than 1% of the total energy demand of the UK. Read the “State of Sector Energy Report 2022” at: https://www.communityenergyengland.org/pages/state-of-the-sector.

Yes, successive governments have provided – now much-lamented – incentives such as the Feed-in-Tariff and the Renewable Heat Incentive, but communities really struggle to find the development revenue to prospect, plan, develop and then ultimately build, own and operate their own renewable energy and storage systems. It’s been the ‘Holy Grail’ of community development of any form for decades and part of the wider local democratic deficit in Scotland in particular. Some believe independence will unleash a new surge in local empowerment. Others are sceptical. When compared to other par” and Lesley Riddock’s seminal book – ‘Blossom’.

Raising capital does not seem to be such a major challenge as experienced in many community renewable energy shares or bond schemes, often oversubscribed, and earning anywhere between 0.5% and 4% interest. The average invested is somewhere in the region of £1500 per investor with some schemes starting at £5 for low income households to be part of this local investment. Some projects like ours – part funded by over £40k worth of community bonds delivered in partnership with Scottish Communities Finance Limited (SCFL) – have deliberately kept interest rates under 1.75%. Firstly, because the nature of our community bonds is that they should not be about making profit as the prime motivation, but helping communities become more carbon-free and resilient through developing locally-owned renewable energy. And we’re pretty disciplined about our small budget ensuring it’s kept well into the black for all eventualities. Furthermore, we are bound by certain rules and regulations by the Finance Conduct Authority to exercise financial discipline so as not to favour the large high-return distant investor. Also, because we want local people to invest in it, sharing the returns far and wide across our community, and at investment purchase levels as low as £50 for a bond, it reinforces that sense of ownership. And in an SCFL survey over 80% say they will invest again. Bonds can also be bought as an ‘eco gift’ for children and grandchildren, creating a legacy for future generations.

The Scottish Government have provided £50 mill over 10 years from the Community and Renewable Energy Scheme (CARES) via Local Energy Scotland – a very supportive scheme – and you can also cite the Climate Challenge Fund, and both south and north of the border there are various funds for communities to tap into to help fund a range of regeneration initiatives and now COVID resilience from the public purse. But it is woefully inadequate, especially when one considers the billions – nay trillions – invested in fossil fuel subsidies globally; or vast amounts given to private companies during the pandemic without due public procurement process or scrutiny. Of course, we sympathised with the terrible predicament the UK Government and public servants were in, attempting to keep us all safe. But when we look back at the money squandered in Test and Trace, PPE contracts and so on, we may just become very irked indeed by the fact that this could have been invested far more sustainably in something as far-reaching and cross cutting as cheaper community energy.

Investing in community energy is apolitical; it cuts across all mainstream party policies. It’s enterprising in the way profits are generated and used as ‘community surplus’ that can be locked into a community. It is cooperative in that it works with the community, often supporting different sites, some more conducive to development than others that could be overlooked to help cut costs, or giving them the option to invest first. It connects strategically with local authorities for use of land and assets, potentially providing rent, planning permission and building warrant and other fees, as well as helping their Climate & Renewables Strategies, or working with different officer experts. It partners with industry and local SMEs for advice, supply of goods, installation, maintenance, monitoring and other innovations. Such activity can boost jobs, education & training opportunities for so many. It can work with fellow communities with lower volunteer and know-how capacity to deliver, or give more benefits to those localities with greater need.

What’s not to like about that?

All things considered, even if you are a local community volunteer, with the passion, hunger and energy, you may become exhausted or disillusioned quickly at the lack of accessible development revenue to employ staff to deal with the mountain of red tape of setting a scheme up. It often takes less than a week to install a small scale rooftop Solar PV system but a whole year to do all the rest! This is a form of modern day madness. It might actually explain a great deal as to why many of us – particularly those in fuel poverty and more worried than ever about their energy bills – have not enjoyed the benefits of ubiquitous renewable forms of energy owned and delivered by their local community. Indeed, the FiT was set up partly to help people in poverty to afford micro-renewable energy systems but failed to deliver. Yet rich landowners and large companies benefited enormously.

The sun provides many more times the – technically capturable – energy we need as an entire planet. This is in the form of existing solar power technologies alone in their various electricity and heat generating forms. So not some fanciful sci-fi movie. Actual, deliverable technologies that right now can power the entire planet in a much cleaner, greener way. Read “10 Short Lessons in Renewable Energy” by Stephen Peake.

The saddest news of all is that scientists, engineers, industrialists, banks, governments and many of us, knew that we should have done this decades ago. The great physicist and mathematician – Arrhenius – knew and lectured about the risk of burning fossil fuels 120 years ago in 1902! His warnings – after studying the effect of thick greenhouse gases on Venus causing surface temperatures over 500^oC, above which no carbon-based life like ours or any on our planet can survive – were cast asunder. Now where have we heard that before? There are not too many climate sceptics around now. But unfortunately for my two children and yours, too many are still flying the fossil fuel, or ‘transition fuel’ flag. And the simple matter is, we just don’t need to. We don’t have time to delay either.

The other great opportunity – albeit poorer brother of the ‘renewables bling’ – is energy efficiency. In my 20 or so years in or around the energy sector, I haven’t visited a building yet – new or old – that couldn’t save considerable amounts of energy through simple energy-saving and efficiency measures. And much of it is sheer common sense in simple behavioural or low cost/no cost measures such as draught proofing or basic insulation.

But even those energy efficiency measures can take considerable time, effort and money to pay – preferably local – people to get them done. Or to rely on caring volunteers to help mobilise.

It’s no wonder local volunteers get exhausted trying to support their local folk – never mind those trying to run food banks. Food sustainability is another huge subject and carbon conundrum to explore for our communities, never mind building local resilience through local energy generation. We could marry the two as in other parts of the world developing solar-agriculture.

We should be employing an army of new ‘Green Miners’. Young and old alike to work in local communities with local groups, volunteers, retrofit clubs, charities and SMEs to deal in this new carbon-saving currency in the new community energy revolution.

In our wee toon, we are very keen to have young people at the heart of this revolution. Having reached out to the local academy and young graduates and undergraduates, we are doing our bit to try and engage them and our Young Energy Enterprise Group in real STEM activities to develop their careers. We are still trawling the funding landscape for pennies to invest in our ambitions to employ local folk to do this green stuff, and are also talking closely with fellow community development trusts in our region and elsewhere to lever in this elusive resource. Despite several knock-backs and near misses, we are still trying.

Now it really is up to big government to properly invest and incentivise the community energy sector.

There is also a decentralising of the energy system coming through as distribution network operators look to become more ‘service-based’, as we innovate and introduce more smart grid systems. But in the UK there are only a few companies managing the grid. Germany has some 800 more locally-based district network operators. We have 2 in Scotland and only half a dozen or so down south. (Reference: https://www.capgemini.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/tl_Overview_of_Electricity_Distribution_in_Europe.pdf)

This provides more hope that a more open, accessible grid and talk of potential nationalisation too, could support communities to develop and store energy they own at scale without those often insurmountable connection barriers and costs. Some communities might go off grid altogether.

Want some more inspiration? Watch the documentary film “We the Power – the Future of Energy is Community-Owned”. Two community energy activists in Germany even managed to wrestle the local grid from the regional nuclear power company via a referendum. People power can work.

Yet in Scotland those communities and homes living closer to cheaper, greener renewable energy generating systems, including wind, hydro and solar, are being unfairly penalised. In the Highlands & Islands, fuel poverty is the highest in the UK, perhaps above 80% in some cases, exacerbated by a ‘Highland premium’, a disproportionate number of higher-cost prepayment meters, solid fuel and electric storage heaters and lower temperatures of course. The whole system is topsy turvy and stacked against those communities in greatest need.

The campaign group ‘Power for People’ in the UK have now managed to sign up over 300 MPs for the implementation of their Local Electricity Bill, now progressing through the UK Parliament. If this goes through, it will provide local communities with the freedom, and remove the red tape and regulatory fees and barriers to effectively sell on their renewable energy and energy surplus to each other and their residents via the National Grid. Indeed, our regulator, OfGEM, have been under huge criticism recently for its lack of teeth and nous in failing to prevent some of the energy market failures we have experienced recently and the unprecedented rise in energy prices, whilst it had been warned about the risks faced by smaller utility suppliers entering the market. The energy price cap is a very blunt instrument and lack of innovation in such policy tools and other incentives are key barriers to resolving our energy crisis.

Earlier this year, our very own MP Martyn Day SNP, deposited our wee petition for a new ‘Community Energy Booster’ form the UK Government. Martyn presented the petition and ‘complaint’ to the Houses of Parliament. We did receive a reasonably positive response from the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Lord Callanan). There are some funds being put into the mix to support the community energy cause. And they graciously cited the Scottish Government’s CARES scheme too, which we’ve already enjoyed. But it is still way insufficient for the type of support that would kick start a new community energy revolution.

On a more positive note, we had visit from MSP and Minister Mairi MacAllan in July and she was very interested in all our local climate action activity, including Linlith-Go-Solar. We shall continue to impress upon our politicians the need for more support. And we continue to learn from others, including the examples above, the Big Solar Coop with its first live investment opportunity to build community solar systems in England, REScoop, Edinburgh Solar Coop, Local Energy Scotland, Community Energy Scotland & England, Scot.e3, Scotland’s Towns Partnership (over 60% of Scotland’s people live in towns and villages and many could be accelerated towards Net Zero and modes of best practice) and many like-minded communities, some of whom have come directly to us to learn about our modest wee enterprise. This collective sharing can only be a good thing for all. We’re keen to marry our ambitions with mass retrofit schemes including those under the new Scottish Government’s Heat In Buildings Strategy, as well as like-minded communities with community sheds, tool libraries, emerging retrofit clubs, business improvement district schemes to support SMEs, local schools, colleges and universities. The potential for such wholesome collaborations is massive.

Perhaps we need to form – urgently – a new Scottish Community Energy Partnership, made up of energy and non-energy bodies, led by grassroots community representatives, starting with a summit on the future of community energy in 2023, building on our assets and good people with the right values and passion to drive us towards a far more sustainable energy system?

Now, will you join us in the new community energy revolution?

Why workers and climate activists should reject the ‘British energy security strategy’

Yesterday (6^th April) the UK Government announced a new ‘British Energy Security Strategy’. The shape of the strategy isn’t a surprise with many of the elements being trailed in recent weeks. Put simply the strategy is a disaster. It’s a recipe for failing to meet UK greenhouse gas emission targets and ignores the recommendations of the IPCC report that was published earlier in the week (4^th April).

This post is a first response, and we will share more detailed analysis in the weeks to come.

The government’s press release notes that the strategy involves an ‘ambitious, quicker expansion of nuclear, wind, solar, hydrogen, oil and gas, including delivering the equivalent to one nuclear reactor a year instead of one a decade.’

Note the ‘expansion of oil and gas’. The aim will be to accelerate the approval of new oil and gas fields in the North Sea and west of Shetland. Essentially, it’s a doubling down on the oil industries so called ‘North Sea Transition Deal’. The aim of the deal is to make the North Sea a ‘net-zero’ oil and gas basin by 2050 – but this can only happen if carbon capture and storage can be developed and introduced at large scale, which is as yet uncertain.

Hydrogen is part of the oil industry strategy – the aim of the transition deal is for hydrogen to replace North Sea gas in domestic and commercial heating systems – these currently account for more than 20% of UK greenhouse gas emissions. The strategy talks about hydrogen supplying around 10% of energy needs. What it doesn’t say is that producing hydrogen by splitting methane or water is an enormously inefficient process and so a very significant proportion of all the new electricity produced from nuclear, wind, solar and oil and gas will be needed to produce the hydrogen!

After a period of equivocating on nuclear power it’s now back at the centre of the strategy. No figures are given, but if we extrapolate from the cost of the current Hinkley C project the proposed developments will cost around £150 billion. The government refers to nuclear as clean and safe. It is neither. This blog has looked at the arguments about nuclear elsewhere. It’s a hugely expensive form of energy, high risk with long construction times and a history of cost overruns and serious and unresolved problems with radioactive waste.

The new strategy says nothing about reducing energy demand through insulating new buildings and retrofitting existing housing stock. Retrofitting the majority of UK housing is estimated to cost around £160 billion – this is roughly what the new nuclear programme will cost. So, it seems like their plan is to construct large scale nuclear plants whose output will then provide the energy that is lost through the walls and roofs of homes, office and factories.

The supposed rationale for the new strategy is energy security. Currently working people are paying the price for the super profits being earned by the oil and gas sector. Led by that sector the strategy opts for a future of high energy prices – continuing oil and gas and new nuclear. Renewable costs continue to decrease, nuclear energy costs continue to rise. Currently renewable electricity is 6 times cheaper than gas and the gap is even bigger between the cost of renewables and the cost of nuclear.

Wind turbines near Carberry – image Pete Cannell CC0

It will be interesting to hear the response from the Scottish Government. Until now Holyrood has been firmly signed up the North Sea Transition Deal and the oil industry agenda, but it has had a firm position of no new nuclear. Similarly, it is now crunch time for the trade unions who have advocated just transition while endorsing the Transition Deal Strategy. The argument at root has been over jobs. It has been the case for a long time now that large-scale investment in renewables creates far more jobs than the same investment in nuclear. Yesterday’s strategy announcement means in effect no transition and no justice. There is an ever more urgent need for the workers movement and the climate movement to work together in opposition to the new strategy (really just the old strategy with more investment in false solutions). Less than 24 hours after its release the strategy has been widely criticised but we will need to do more than oppose this latest attempt at preserving an unacceptable status quo and reject the North Sea transition deal in its entirety.

Briefing #14: Climate, fuel poverty & the cost of living

Briefing #14 on climate, fuel poverty and the cost of living is now available for download. As with all the our briefings you are welcome to use and adapt the briefing content – attribution to https://scote3.net is appreciated.

The content of the briefing is reproduced below.

Climate, fuel poverty & the cost of living

Fuel poverty kills

Prior to the latest crisis almost 25% of households in Scotland lived in fuel poverty and just over 12% were in extreme fuel poverty. Households in extreme fuel poverty are disproportionately represented in rural Scotland. Older people living in rural Scotland are particularly hard hit. Every year thousands die because of fuel poverty – in 2018/19 excess winter mortality (that’s in comparison with the average winter mortality for the previous five years) was 2060 – the death toll can be more than twice as high in cold winters. Around 85% of households in the UK rely on gas for heating and cooking. The huge hike in gas prices is going to make an already unacceptable situation much, much worse.

Rising fuel prices

Gas and electricity prices have been rising faster than inflation for a long time. From 2006 – 2016, Gas prices rose by 71% and Electricity 62%. Between 2017 and 2020 electricity prices increased by a further 8% in real terms while gas prices fell by a similar amount. But gas prices are extremely volatile. Since 2019 the wholesale price has almost trebled.

Gas consumption fell by just over 2% in 2020, a consequence of lockdowns around the world. In 2021 there was a rebound with consumption increasing by 4.6% because of increased economic activity and several extreme weather events worldwide. The cost of producing gas is about the same this year as it was last year and the year before. So why has the price rocketed up? Prior to 1987 the EU designated natural gas a premium fuel that should be reserved for home heating. Now 60% of gas is used to generate electricity. Britain used to have significant storage capability. This was abandoned in favour of allowing the market to deliver gas as needed. These changes have been a disaster. Gas is traded on the spot market with hedge funds gambling on future prices. As a result, the cost of an essential utility is determined by a casino where traders rake in massive profits while consumers pay the price.

Lack of ambition

In June 2019 the Scottish Parliament passed a new act setting statutory targets for reducing fuel poverty. Rightly it highlights the impact of fuel poverty on the most vulnerable in society. Low-income, high-energy costs, and poorly insulated housing result in the appalling situation where families, young people, elderly, disabled and many working people, cannot afford adequate warmth. The new act sets interim targets for reducing fuel poverty to 15% of households by 2030 and final targets for 2040. Considering the cost of living and climate crises we face this is too slow and not enough. The act failed to address the threat posed by a chaotic market. From April 2022 annual bills will increase by an average of almost £700. Further increases are expected later in the year. The numbers in fuel poverty are set to rise well above the current level.

Fossil fuels cost the earth

Both Holyrood and Westminster remain committed to the maximum economic extraction of oil and gas from the North Sea. The big energy companies are making billions in extra profits out of the crisis. North Sea oil and gas operates under a regime of very low taxation. With prices high companies will be doubling down on plans to open new gas fields. If this happens there is no chance of meeting the reductions in greenhouse gas emissions that are essential. We argue that there are two essential steps. The first is to protect all those who are in fuel poverty and stop more people joining them. A windfall tax on profiteers will help with this but should not be mistaken for a long-term solution – and the scale of the problem is so large that it requires significant redistribution with higher taxes on the rich and much more support for the poor. These are necessary short-term steps to prevent large scale misery, deprivation and increased winter deaths. But a secure future for us all rests on gas being taken out of the market, with North Sea and North Atlantic oil and gas taken into public ownership and control. With public control it then becomes possible to plan for the phase out of fossil fuels from the North Sea. In the process we cut greenhouse gas emissions and replace expensive gas heating by cheaper renewables. The interests of working people and the need to protect the planet are aligned.

A mass insulation campaign

In its ‘One Million Climate Jobs Pamphlet’, the Campaign Against Climate Change (CACC) notes that

Three quarters of emissions from houses and flats … are caused by heating air and water. To reduce this we need to insulate and draught- proof the buildings, and replace inefficient boilers. This can cut the amount of energy used to heat the home and water by about 40% and delivers the double-whammy of reducing energy costs and helping mitigate the scourge of fuel poverty.

Based on these CACC estimates, which are for the whole of the UK, a campaign to properly insulate all homes in Scotland would employ around 20,000 construction workers for the next 20 years. This doesn’t account for additional jobs in education, training and manufacture that would spin off from such an endeavour. Through this carbon dioxide emissions from homes would be cut by 95%. We could ensure that all new houses are effectively carbon neutral. The technology exists – there are examples of ‘passive houses’ that use very little energy. Insulation together with the steady replacement of gas boilers by affordable heat pumps is the solution to cutting the energy demands of domestic heating. Hydrogen is not a solution (see Briefing #13).

New Technologies

The current costs for fossil fuel power range from 4p -12p per kilowatt-hour. Inter renewable energy agency (IREA) state that renewable energy will cost 2p – 7p with the best onshore wind and solar photovoltaic projects expected to deliver electricity for 2p or less. Renewable energy is necessary for a sustainable future, and it is cheaper than fossil fuels. Current Westminster Government policy – notably the subsidy ban for new onshore wind farms – is impeding the shift to renewables.

No Fracking

For the moment fracking is off the agenda in Scotland. The result of a magnificent campaign of resistance. But INEOS continues to import fracked gas from the US. This has to stop.

In conclusion

Fuel Poverty and the cost-of-living crisis are the direct result of the “wrecking ball” of market forces dominating our need for energy to give us warmth, light and sustenance. In the pursuit of profit, the use of fossil fuels adds to the catastrophe of climate change.

We have the technology and skills to stop this madness and misery through a radical shift in Energy policy that would combine sustainable and renewable resources dedicated to social need. Tackling climate change would go hand in hand with creating additional jobs, eliminating fuel poverty, and improving health and well-being. To make this happen we need the kind of focus and the level of investment that has only normally applied at times of war. Ending the use of fossil fuels over a short period is practically possible provided there is the political will.

Some of the material in this briefing also appears in Briefing #7 – Fuel Poverty

About Scot E3

Scot.E3 is a group of rank and file trade unionists, activists and environmental campaigners. In 2107 we made a submission to the Scottish Government’s Consultation on a Scottish Energy Strategy. Since then we have been busy producing and sharing leaflets and bulletins.

We believe there is a compelling case for a radical shift in energy policy. Looming over us there is the prospect of catastrophic climate change, which will wreck the future for our children and grandchildren.

We have the knowledge and the skills to make a difference to people’s lives in the here and now. A sustainable future requires a coherent strategy for employment, energy and the environment. We need a sense of urgency. We need a coordinated strategy and massive public investment.

Energy From Waste Is No Part Of A Green Transition

In December 2019 we published the text of a new briefing (Number 11) on Energy from Waste. It’s good news that this issue is now getting more publicity. The Ferret has highlighted a new report and briefing from Friends of the Earth Scotland that points out that the combined capacity of the Waste burning power plants proposed in Scotland exceeds the total tonnage of household waste available. These plans run a coach and horses through recycling targets and will increase carbon emissions. They should be stopped.

The case against new developments in the North Sea

The North Sea hydrocarbon reserves are among the most expensive and most technically difficult in the world. They are also short-medium life reserves compared with larger landmass oilfields.

Anticipating these disincentives, the incoming Labour governments of 1964-69 and 1974-79 with the state-owned BNOC and British Gas companies decided to make them more attractive for licenced operators by zero valuing to hydrocarbon assets thus avoiding the usual auction bidding process that would entail up-front purchase and risk acceptance by prospective extraction companies.

Then taxation rates on oil/gas extracted were relaxed to a very minimum as an incentive subsidy on future exploration and extraction activities. These arrangements- along with wholesale privatisation in 1980- meant that high profits were assured at low taxation rates and with the burden of risk and asset write-off being shouldered entirely by the taxpayer.

Also, these arrangements allowed for profligate extraction with value worthless assets being frittered away when the operational conditions got too difficult.

Unlike Norway– and many other oil and gas nation-states, no sovereign wealth fund was created on the back of oil/gas profit taxes- which in the case of Norway, has resulted in the biggest such fund for social welfare and public infrastructure in the world. So with Scottish territorial waters accounting for over 70% of UK oil and gas fields, little in the way- other than employment- of benefit has resulted/been accrued for the Scottish people.

Now Climate Change imperatives are bearing-down on all countries signed up to the IPOCC targets on carbon emissions targets- but yet ALL reliable sources producing estimates on oil (in particular) output and demand/consumption set targets well above limits required to bring about anything like a global temperature slow-down.

Also, the estimates for Scottish offshore- and fracked gas onshore- extraction fly clearly in the face of the Scottish government targets for a green neutral to zero-economy by 2030.

And also, also, it is clear that despite over 40 years of offshore hydrocarbon extraction- the living standards of the Scottish population- already low in comparison with much of the EU as well as many regions of the UK as a whole- have continued to fall and have continued downwards while the offshore company profits have continued upwards. Essentially we have had subsidies and tax breaks for the rich oil companies and merciless market rigour for the poorest consumers.

Global oil prices (to which gas is pegged) continue to be volatile- but with an OPEC cartel of some 20 countries which are hydrocarbon exporting economic mono-cultures- future price wars- like the one in 2014 which saw 75,000 job losses in the North Sea- make any future dependence on the industry both a climate change folly and an economically ruinous strategy.

Oil and gas over-production is already upon us and any future development- such as the West of Shetland fields- is both unsustainable AND a waste of opportunities to create a green and socially equitable political economy for Scotland.

Dr Brian Parkin, Senior research fellow (Energy Economics), Leeds University

February 2020.

StatfjordA(Jarvin1982) Image CC0 StatfjordA (Jarvin1982).jpg

Energy efficient housing

The announcement by Paul Wheelhouse that the Scottish government will work on new regulations to ensure that new homes use renewable or low carbon energy sources for heating is a small but welcome step in the right direction. However, the timescale for action is disappointingly unambitious; the new measures are not planned to be implemented until 2024. Setting a much shorter deadline would send a message to private sector builders and local authorities that ‘climate emergency’ is exactly what it says. In housing, as elsewhere, action needs to be take place on the shortest time lines possible.

Let’s up the pressure for a mass public programme of retrofitting existing houses to be energy efficient. This is a necessary step and in addition the climate jobs and the improvements in living conditions that it would generate would have a massive impact on people’s attitude to the climate emergency and what needs to be done. It would be just transition in practice.

Passive House, Image CC BY SA 3.0

Energy from Waste

On of the issues that came up in discussion at the recent Scot.E3 conference was ‘Energy from Waste’. There is large-scale investment in this technology taking place across the UK. We agreed to produce a briefing on the topic. What follows is the text of the first draft of the briefing. We are also developing further resources that will be added to the Resources page on this site. We’d welcome comments on the text and ideas for useful resources that we could link to.

There are a large number of Energy from Waste (EFW) projects planned across the UK. By the end of 2017 there were nearly 120 EFW proposals at various planning stages. Sixteen of these are in Scotland. In this briefing we take a critical look at Energy from Waste and ask whether it has a place in a strategy for a zero carbon Scotland.

Energy from Waste Projects

At first sight, the term ‘Energy from Waste’ appears to be all things green. It suggests a new and rational way of ‘treating’ the ever-growing mountains of waste that are an inevitable by-product of our throwaway society. It invites the idea of a ‘green energy’ that has been derived from what would otherwise be a possibly harmful and long-term environmental problem. When the alternatives proposed are either a long-term toxic and smelly and unsightly landfill problem or a health-threatening incineration route, then EFW appears to be a sensible choice.

Behind the EFW hype, which many UK local authorities have accepted, there is a fog of confusion regarding the most optimal waste management solutions; whether they be recycling or minimising the production of waste at source – both options are ruled out by market driven/low cost and value-for-money economics.

Landfill

Since 1945 the volume of disposable waste per household in the UK has multiplied threefold. Over the years, the local authorities have traditionally chosen landfill disposal as the preferred waste ‘treatment’ route. However, landfill, demands considerable land acreage and depth and entails significant public health risks as well as potentially long-term hazards for the environment. Aside from smell and vermin nuisance, landfill sites- even the best managed ones- constitute over time- a high risk of biological and toxin leaching into surface soils and ground-waters. Methane from decomposition also adds to greenhouse gas emissions.

For all of these reasons, waste management authorities have either been incentivised away from landfill by grants for recycling- or more often – ‘disincentivised’ in the way of increasingly punitive landfill taxes. First introduced in the 1970’s, landfill taxes have been subsequently reinforced by EU directive-and as alternative waste ‘treatment’ technologies have fallen in capital cost, so landfill taxes have risen.

Landfill tax per tonne

2010 £63.00

2018 £88.95

2019-20 £94.15

Tax policies make EFW-type waste treatment strategies appear attractive- particularly because in exchange for a penalty for handling waste, there is an income from generating electricity.

EFW technologies

There are a number of EFW technologies on offer but all share the same objective of converting solid (or in some cases, liquid/sludge) waste into energy for the production of electricity.

Typically, an EFW plant is based on an incinerator chamber into which is fed solid waste. The upper walls of the chamber comprise water-filled tubes in which super-heated steam is produced for a steam turbine that in turn produces electricity.

Steam is also captured from the waste feed system. If the plant is fitted with what is called a ‘back-pressure’ steam turbine, then high-pressure hot water can be distributed to local industrial and residential heating networks in what is called a Combined Heat and Power (CHP) system.

However, as such plant is typically fed unsorted, or semi-sorted waste with a low calorific value, the combustion process will be ‘boosted’ with an additional combustion element in the form of natural gas or diesel oil. Less typical EFW technologies with little application to date, are the various gasification processed that involve the digestion of biological waste- usually food or agricultural wastes which are then converted into a ‘bio-gas’ which via a gas turbine is converted into a higher electricity output. In some processes, the waste is heat-treated anaerobically – i.e. in low oxygen conditions- (pyrolysis) to produce a synthetic ‘natural’ gas.

All EFW systems discharge exhaust gases. The principal emission is carbon dioxide but there are also emissions of nitrogen dioxide. Quenching water can contain uncombusted toxins and solid wastes in the form of light ash or clinker have to be disposed of safely.

Image M J Richardson, CC BY-SA 2.0 https://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/5668478

Renewable energy?

EFW systems add greenhouse gases to the atmosphere through the process itself and also through large-scale transport of waste to the incinerators (mostly by road). They are a response to the perceived problem of landfill rather than tackling systems that produce unrecyclable waste. To operate efficiently EFW plants require a continuing supply of waste at or around current levels. Scotland produces around 1.6 million tonnes of combustible municipal waste per year, if current plans come to fruition this means and awful lot of capacity chasing a very finite amount of waste. Local authorities could be tied in to contracts to supply waste for the next thirty or forty years. This could pose a real threat to the commitment to recycle plastics and other recoverable materials out of the waste treatment stream. The Scottish Environmental Protection Agency notes that EFW is not a renewable energy source but claims that because it can be substituted for fossil fuel electricity production it forms an important part of the Scottish Strategy for sustainable energy!

Alternative Strategy needed

Energy from Waste is not green and not sustainable. It undermines attempts to reuse and recycle and it has a significant carbon footprint through transport of waste to centralised sites and through the greenhouse emissions from the burning of waste.

Investment in Energy from waste should be reallocated to genuinely sustainable technologies aimed at cutting greenhouse gas emissions, which also provide opportunities for jobs in construction and better opportunities for long-term employment.

Further reading

For further information on Energy from Waste go to www.scote3.wordpress.com and click on the Resources tab in the menu. This briefing is one in a series produced by Scot.E3.

More on BECCS and geoengineering

A few days ago we published Scot.E3’s Briefing #10 on Bioenergy with Carbon Capture and Storage (BECCS). In the briefing we take a critical view of BECCS. A newly published book by Holly Jean Buck – ‘After Geoengineering’ (Verso 2019) takes a more positive view. As a contribution to the debate on this important issue we republish (with permission) a detailed review and critique of ‘After Geoengineering’ from the PeopleandNature blog. The review concludes by noting that

The best way to challenge corporations and governments is to make this discussion our own, rather than their property. Then we will be better armed in battles over political choices that we hope not only to influence, but to take into our hands.

Geoengineering: let’s not get it back to front

We need to talk about geoengineering. Badly. To do so, I suggest two ground rules.

First, when we imagine futures with geoengineering, whether utopian or dystopian, let’s talk about the path from the present to those futures.

Second, if society is to protect itself from dangerous global warming, it will most likely combine a whole range of different methods; there is no silver bullet. So we need to discuss geoengineering together with other actions and technologies, not in isolation.

In After Geoengineering, Holly Buck urges social movements and climate justice militants to engage with geoengineering, rather than rejecting it. She questions campaigners’ focus on mitigation, i.e. on measures such as energy conservation and renewable electricity generation that reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Civil society groups protesting at the UN climate talks in Lima, Peru, in 2014, when fossil fuel companies organised sessions on carbon capture and storage. Photo by Carol Linnitt from the DeSmog Blog.

Buck offers a clear, jargon-free review of technologies, from afforestation and biochar that some climate campaigners embrace, to solar radiation management, the last word in technofixes that is broadly reviled. She intersperses her narrative with fictional passages, warning of the pitfalls of “mathematical pathways or scenarios, behind which are traditions of men gaming our possible futures” (p. 48).

But one of Buck’s key arguments – that we will reach a point where society will collectively “lose hope in the capacity of current emissions-reduction measures to avert climate upheaval”, and “decide that something else must be tried” (pp. 1-2) – cuts right across both my ground rules.

Buck asks: are we at the point […] where “the counterfactual scenario is extreme climate suffering” and therefore “it is worth talking about more radical or extreme measures [than mitigation]”, such as geoengineering? “Deciding where the shift – the moment of reckoning, the desperation point – lies is a difficult task” (p. 4).

This is a false premise, in my view, for three reasons.

First: we can not, and will not for the foreseeable future, perceive this “desperation point” as a moment in time. For island nations whose territory is being submerged, for indigenous peoples in the wildfire-ravaged Amazon, for victims of hurricanes and crop failures, the point of “extreme climate suffering” has already passed. For millions in south Asian nations facing severe flooding, it is hovering very close. For others living on higher ground, particularly in the global north, it may not arrive for years, perhaps even decades. If we take action, it will hopefully never arrive in its more extreme forms. This slow-burning quality of climate crisis is one of the things that makes it hard to deal with.

Second: at no point in the near future will “we” easily be able to take decisions on geoengineering – particularly the large-scale techniques – collectively. Political fights over geoengineering are pitting those with power and wealth against the common interest, and it’s hard to see how it could be otherwise.

Buck writes: “There will be a moment where ‘we’, in some kind of implied community, decide that something else [other than mitigation] must be tried” (p. 2). But she doesn’t probe who this “we” is, or spell out the implications of the fact that, in the class society in which we live, power is appropriated from the “implied community” by the state, acting in capital’s interests.

We can only decide, to the extent that we challenge their power. We can not free technologies from that context without freeing ourselves from it.

Third: the political fights actually unfolding are not about “geoengineering vs extreme climate suffering”, but about “geoengineering vs measures to cut greenhouse gas emissions”.

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is lauded by the fossil fuel industry as an alternative to cutting fossil fuel use; Bioenergy with carbon capture and storage (BECCS) is included in the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) scenarios in order to cover up governments’ failure to reduce emissions; research funds that go to technofixes such as ocean fertilisation and solar radiation management (SRM), that sit easily with centralised state action, do not go to decentralised technologies that have democratic potential.

Buck believes that, despite these current clashes, we can uncover ways of using geoengineering for the common good. For example, she writes of expensive and unproven techniques for direct removal of carbon from the atmosphere:

We have to move from reflexive opposition of new technologies toward shaping them in line with our demands and alternative visions (p. 206).

Shape technologies in line with our visions of a socially just society? Yes, certainly. Start with direct carbon removal or CCS? Absolutely not.

We should focus, first, on technologies that produce non-fossil energy, and those that cut fossil fuel use in first-world economies and the energy-intensive material suppliers in the global south that feed them. We need also to understand technologies of adaptation to a warmed-up world (e.g. flood defences and how they can work for everyone, and not just the rich).

On the global climate strike, 20 September, in London

As for technologies that suck carbon from the atmosphere, if they can be used in the common interest at all, it should be a matter of principle that “soft” local technologies (e.g. afforestation and biochar) be researched and discussed in preference to big interventionist technologies like SRM.

I will expand these arguments with reference to three themes: (1) the current treatment of geoengineering techniques by governments and companies; (2) whether, and why, we should start with “soft” and local technologies, as opposed to big ones; and (3) how we might compare geoengineering with mitigation technologies.

Geoengineering, states and companies

The dangers inherent in Buck’s approach are nowhere clearer than with CCS. This technique extracts carbon dioxide from wherever it is emitted, e.g. power stations’ smokestacks, with “scrubbers” (often using adsorbent chemicals). The CO2 is then trapped, liquefied and transported to a site nearby to be stored.

CCS was developed by oil companies more than 40 years ago in the USA, as a technique for Enhanced Oil Recovery (EOR), i.e. squeezing extra barrels of oil out of a depleting reservoir. The captured carbon is pumped into oil reservoirs to increase the pressure, and increase the volume of oil that could be pumped to the surface.

More recently, CCS has been used to trap carbon dioxide emissions at power stations and other industrial sites. But it is so complex, and so expensive, that its supporters say it can not yet be applied at large scale. It has never lived up to decades of talk about its potential.

Buck, displaying a super-optimism that strains credibility, writes:

Perhaps industry’s failure to make use of this technology could even be an opportunity to redirect it for more progressive ends (p. 124).

Linking it with biofuel production is “an opportunity to appropriate this group of techniques for redistributive ends” – which would require “an appetite for paying for and living with expensive infrastructure – and for making bright, clear distinctions regarding how and why it is built” (p. 127).

Who will steer the introduction of geoengineering techniques? Buck argues that:

If there’s no progressive vision about how to use CCS, […] the oil companies can essentially take us hostage (p. 203).

To advance an alternative vision to the companies’ would require a price on carbon, she argues (p. 204); a discussion about nationalising oil companies (p. 206); and a movement to demand carbon removal from the state, linking it to an end to subsidies for fossil fuels (p. 207).

This logic is back-to-front.

CCS, unlike renewable electricity generation and a string of proven mitigation technologies, will require years of development before it can work at large scale and in a manner that makes any economic sense.

Moreover, CCS’s function is to remove carbon dioxide already produced by economic activity.

So in every situation, the first question to ask about it is: is there not a way to avoid emitting the carbon dioxide in the first place?

Let’s imagine an optimistic scenario, in which, in a western oil producing country, e.g. the USA or UK, a social democratic or left-leaning government, committed to serious action on climate change, is elected. The oil companies find themselves fighting a desperate battle to protect their practices and profits; a progressive, working-class movement seeks to control and contain them.

That movement will surely put stopping fossil fuel subsidies at the top of its list of demands. Some sections of it might demand carbon taxes (and some oil companies are already reconciled to these). At best, some of the oil companies will be nationalised.

But then we will surely face struggle over what to do with the funds freed up by an end to subsidies, and what to do with companies over which the state has taken control. Should funds be invested in CCS development? Or in proven technologies that can slash fossil fuel demand? Should oil companies be directed to use their engineering capacity to develop CCS? Or to use it to complete the decarbonisation of electricity generation and start working on other economic sectors?

Carbon Capture and Storage with Enhanced Oil Recovery. From the Power Engineering International web site

If there is a situation where CCS research would be preferred, I can not imagine it. And Buck didn’t spell one out in her book.

One difficulty I had with Buck’s argument is that in a crucial section on CCS (pp. 133-137), she discusses it together with direct capture of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere, a different technique (also currently too expensive to be operable at any scale). Her interest in the latter relates to a possible future need to draw carbon dioxide down from the atmosphere more rapidly than can be done with other “softer” technologies (biochar, afforestation, etc).

This is something we might have to worry about in many years’ time, and I don’t want to speculate about it now.

If there is a situation where CCS research would be preferred, I can not imagine it. And Buck didn’t spell one out in her book.

This is something we might have to worry about in many years’ time, and I don’t want to speculate about it now.

But Buck sees both technologies as a way of reforming oil companies, in the course of implementing a Green New Deal in the USA, i.e. as a current political issue. Direct air capture could “breach the psychic chain between CCS and fossil fuels”, she suggests (p. 127).

Now? Or in many years’ time? After our movement has grown strong enough to stop fossil fuel subsidies, or even to nationalise oil companies? Or before? Timing and sequencing matter.

Given that CCS and direct air capture are both monstrously expensive and many never work at scale, and given the emergency nature of climate action, proven mitigation and renewable electricity generation technologies should be our priority. That’s the quickest way of reducing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. If that doesn’t fit with oil companies as presently constituted, tough on them.

The other potential use of CCS that Buck discusses is in conjunction with bioenergy (BECCS). CCS with fossil-fueled processes only saves the carbon those processes have produced, and is at best carbon-neutral. BECCS is seen as potentially carbon-negative, i.e. it could leave the atmosphere with less carbon than it started with. Plants naturally capture carbon as they grow; if they are used for fuel, with CCS, that carbon is also captured and stored.

BECCS is unproven to work at scale, in part because it would need massive amounts of land to grow the crops, presenting a potential threat to hundreds of millions of people who live by farming.

The principal practical use of BECCS so far has been by the IPCC: by including wildly exaggerated estimates of BECCS use, they have made their scenarios for avoiding dangerous climate change add up, without too rapid a transition away from fossil fuels.

This use – or rather, misuse – of BECCS has provoked outrage from climate scientists since the IPCC’s fifth assessment report was published in 2014. (See e.g. here.)

One team of climate scientists who double-checked the calculations, led by Sabine Fuss at the Mercator Research Institute in Berlin, concluded that the IPCC projections of BECCS’s potential was probably between twice and four times what is physically possible.

The best estimates Fuss and her colleagues could make for the sustainable global potential of negative emission technologies were: 0.5-3.6 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide removal per year (GtCO2/yr) for afforestation and reforestation, 0.5-5 GtCO2/yr for BECCS, 0.5-2 GtCO2/yr for biochar, 2-4 GtCO2/yr for enhanced weathering, 0.5-5 GtCO2/yr for direct air capture of carbon and 0-5 GtCO2/yr for soil carbon squestration.

Fuss and her colleagues wrote that they share “the widespread concern that reaching annual deployment scales of 10-20 GtCO2/yr via BECCS at the end of the 21st century, as is the case in many [IPCC] scenarios, is not possible without severe adverse side effects.”

And that’s putting it in polite, scholarly language.

Buck does not discuss this dispute, perhaps the sharpest public rift between the IPCC and the climate scientists on whose work it relies. She only comments in passing that, to answer why the concept of BECCS has any life in it, “possible answers include” that “modelers needed a fix for the models, and BECCS seemed the most plausible” (p. 64). That’s wildly understated.

Further on, Buck speculates that “deployment [of BECCS] at climate-significant scales would be a massive feat of social engineering”, which would imply “a different politics” under which people who live on and work the land own the resources for production (pp. 68-69).

Again, this argument is back-to-front.

I embrace the idea of speculating about a post-capitalist future in which industrial agriculture, along with other monstrosities, has been overcome. And I would not exclude the idea that BECCS in some form might be part of it. But long before we get to that stage, there is the current battle to be fought: we need to join with the many honest climate scientists who have denounced the fraudulent use of BECCS in the IPCC’s scenarios; to expose its use as a cover for pro-fossil-fuel government policies; and address the climate policy priorities those governments seek to avoid. Now, BECCS is not one of these.

Big and small, “hard” and “soft”

The geoengineering technologies discussed by Buck range from those that are by their nature local, small-scale and “soft”, to the largest, “hardest” technologies such as SRM. At the furthest “soft” end is biochar, a process by which biomass (crop residues, grass, and so on) is combusted at low temperatures (pyrolysis) to make charcoal, which can be mixed into soils or buried, to store the carbon. Afforestation is also on the “soft” end of the scale, as are some ocean farming techniques. Buck also points to some significant local, if not “soft”, techniques, such as engineering specific glaciers to prevent them from melting (pp. 247-248).

Direct Air Capture, used with Enhanced Oil Recovery. Cartoon from the GeoEngineering monitor web site

Buck is sceptical of some claims made for the potential of afforestation, and I am too. But her appeals to social movements to engage, instead, with big and “hard” technologies left me unconvinced.

“The shortcomings of large infrastructure projects have generated suspicion about megaprojects, suspicion which may be transferred to solar geoengineering” (p. 45), she writes. Quite rightly so, I say.

Degrowth advocates, Buck complains, believe that “technologically complex systems beget technocratic elites: fossil fuels and nuclear power are dangerous because sophisticated technological systems managed by bureaucrats will gradually become less democratic and egalitarian” (p. 160). The belief that big technological systems “result in a society divided into experts and users […] limits the engagement of degrowth thinking with many forms of carbon removal, which is unfortunate” (p. 161).

What about the substantial issue? Don’t sophisticated technological systems managed by bureaucrats really become less democratic and egalitarian? Aren’t the degrowth advocates right about that? Hasn’t nuclear power, for example, shown us that?

Arguments similar to Buck’s about geoengineering techniques – that, if they were controlled differently, could be of collective benefit, and so on – have long been made about nuclear power, the second largest source of near-zero-carbon electricity after hydro power. But experience shows that nuclear’s scale has made it intrinsically anti-collective: in our hierarchical society, it has only been, and could only have been, developed by the state and large corporations. From where I am standing, SRM and CCS look much the same.

Take another technology that is in a sense both big and small: the internet. Its pioneers saw its huge democratic potential as a tool of communication, but as it has grown, under corporate and state control, it has become an instrument of state surveillance, corporate control and mind-bending marketing techniques.

For Buck, the internet of the early 2000s was “new and transformative, before we knew it would give us so many cat videos and listicles and trolls”. She appeals to critics of geoengineering, who “tend to locate the psychological roots of climate engineering in postwar, big science techno-optimism”, to think of it instead as “a phenomenon born of the early 2000s, a more globalist moment” (p. 44).

I do not recognise, in the early 2000s, this moment of hope for the internet or for “globalism”. The terrorist attack on the USA on 11 September 2001 marked the end of a desperate game of catch-up, played by US regulatory agencies against the Silicon Valley entrepreneurs: it prompted demands by the security agencies that the state’s focus shift from stopping the tech giants hoovering up information, to insisting they share that information with the state.

The Boundary Dam carbon capture project in Saskatchewen, Canada, one of the small number of existing CCS projects

All restraints on the invasion of personal privacy were removed. In China, the state is now combining the same technologies with facial recognition software to take control over citizens to a new level. (Shoshana Zuboff writes about this in her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.)

A range of socialist writers from Andre Gorz onwards have theorised the way that technology is shaped by capitalism and can not be seen as inherently progressive. A new generation of technological determinists such as Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek, and Leigh Phillips, have offered a challenge to this tradition (which has left me completely unconvinced).

A serious discussion of geoengineering will necessarily be contextualised by consideration of these underlying issues about technology.

To my mind, socialist and collectivist politics can embrace “soft” and small technologies more easily than large ones, because they can more easily be used independently of structures of power and wealth. In many cases, e.g. electricity networks, we may well find ourselves advocating a combination of big and small technologies. But if we envisage socialism as a process that resists and eventually supercedes the state and big corporations, then in principle those technologies that can only be mobilised by the state and big corporations, such as nuclear power – and the big “hard” forms of geoengineering – present greater problems to us.

Which technologies? That’s a political battle

Buck argues that “a world patterned around carbon removal would be similar to one that’s committed itself to deep decarbonisation and extreme mitigation”, but had gone one step further. On the other hand, she writes that “regeneration, removal, restoration and so forth [her descriptive categories for a range of geoengineering techniques] bring a different narrative than mitigation, and perhaps a different politics”. It might be easier to “build a broader coalition around regeneration”, although, or perhaps because, “the goal is more drastic” (p 192).

To point to geoengineering advocacy as an alternative, preferable to mitigation (i.e. reduction of carbon emissions), carries a great danger of playing into the hands of corporate and government opponents of action.

Who, in the here and now, will comprise this “broader coalition” to consider geoengineering? According to Noah Deich of Carbon 180, who is quoted by Buck (p. 246):

[T]here’s the global Paris Agreement community [?], as well as energy, mining and agriculture, all of whom need to embrace carbon removal, ‘not as a scary transformation for their business, but really the natural evolution for where they need to go to increase prosperity. To serve their customers, employees, shareholders, all of these key stakeholders better. It needs to come from the top down.’

This version of geoengineering advocacy, which seeks to combine it with satisfying corporate needs to “serve stakeholders better”, scares me stiff. How can it be anything but craven greenwash?

Buck is not herself advocating such alliances. But she clearly sides with big and “hard” technologies against small, “soft” ones.

She derides supporters of regenerative agriculture for their “determined post-truth faith in soils”, which, she fears, “could contribute to a failure to invest in other technologies that are also needed for this gargantuan carbon removal challenge” (p. 116).

Why send more funds the way of big technologies? Already, “eco-system based approaches”, including afforestation and regenerative agriculture, only get 2.5% of global climate finance, Buck has reported a few pages earlier (p. 96).

Soft” afforestation and biochar, or “hard” CCS and SRM? Buck cites a research group headed by Detlef van Vuuren of Utrecht university in the Netherlands, who proposed that the 1.5 degrees C target could be met with minimal amounts of BECCS and other types of carbon dioxide removal. (Reported here; full article (restricted access) here.) They propose a larger programme of afforestation, and more rapid expansion of renewables-generated electricity, than in the IPCC scenarios. Van Vuuren and his colleagues also factor in lifestyle changes, including an overhaul of food processing towards lab-grown meat.

Buck is sceptical about the prospect of this “dramatic transformation”, as opposed to a focus on carbon removal – although she concludes that it should be “a vibrant matter of debate” (p. 109). And I agree with her there. But still more important is a related debate that is absent from her book: the potential of energy conservation, rather than carbon removal, in the fight against dangerous climate change, which has been downplayed in the IPCC’s reports for years.

By energy conservation I mean the overhaul of the big technological systems that wolf down fossil-fuel-produced energy. This involves other dramatic transformations: of industrial, transport and agricultural practices, and in the way people live – particularly in the cities of the global north where transport systems are based on cars (or, now, SUVs), people are encouraged to consume some goods (e.g. hamburgers) unhealthily and excessively, and live in heat-leaking, energy-inefficient buildings.

These transformations could not only forestall dangerous climate change, but also make lives better and more fulfilling.

An indication of energy conservation potential is provided by a group of energy specialists, headed by Arnalf Grubler of the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Austria, who last year published a scenario suggesting that the 1.5 degree target, along with sustainable development goals, could be met entirely by energy conservation.

The point is not that one of these groups of technology researchers is 100% right as against another group. Rather, that to inform a serious discussion on these issues among people who are concerned about social justice and climate justice, we need to consider the relative advantages and disadvantages not only of different types of geoengineering, but of energy conservation measures too.

New version of nuclear briefing

An updated version is now available of our briefing on the dangers posed by the damaged Hunterston nuclear reactors and the reasons why nuclear power has no part to play in decarbonising the Scottish economy. We’ve reproduced the text here and you can download the briefing from our resources page.

revised briefing 9 image

The two remaining nuclear power stations in Scotland can generate about a third of our electricity when in operation. Hunterston B and Torness are ageing, in bad shape and well past their planned retirement dates. This briefing explains why they pose a serious risk to public safety and why nuclear has no place in a sustainable energy policy.

Problems with AGRs

The Scottish nuclear reactors at Hunterston and Torness are both examples of what are known as Advanced Gas Cooled Reactors or AGRs. Designed in the 1960’s, AGRs were built at seven sites around the UK between 1965 and 1988. Hunterston was connected to the grid in 1976 with a design life of 30 years. The reactors have had a consistently poor record. To achieve high-energy efficiency they were designed to operate with very high temperatures in the reactor core. This requires a very complicated reactor design. The thousands of graphite blocks that make up the reactor core are critical to reactor safety. However, the bolts that secure them are liable to corrode at the planned operating temperatures. As a result the reactors have always been run at lower than designed temperatures ensuring that efficiency is sub optimal.

The big selling point of AGRs was that they were designed for continuous operation. The idea was that the fuel rods and control rods that govern the rate of the nuclear reaction could be moved in and out of the reactor core while it remained in operation. Again this was never achieved. Expansion of the reactor core resulted in the channels for the fuel rods and control rods being distorted out of position. Consequently the necessary precision of fuel rod and control rod insertion/extraction was never achieved and after a series of serious fuel rod jamming incidents, on load refuelling was abandoned.

A disaster waiting to happen?

However, the story of AGRs is not just about failure to achieve design objectives. Graphite, which makes up the rector core, is a form of carbon. Subject to intense radiation it becomes brittle and prone to cracking. The longer the reactor is in operation the worse this becomes. Reactor 3 at Hunterston is currently offline because it’s estimated that there are 377 cracks in the reactor core. Reactor 4 has an estimated 209 cracks and has been allowed to run for 4 months up to December

To put this in context there are 3000 graphite blocks in each reactor. The latest report from the ONR (Office for Nuclear Regulation) warns that the cores are disintegrating with 58 fragments so far identified. This has huge implications for safety.

Hunterston B is 42 years old. It was originally designed to operate for a maximum of 30 or 35 years and it is running beyond the original design safety limits. With the ongoing crumbling of the reactor core. A sudden outage, steam surge or earth tremor could result in a serious accident and a large release of radioactive gas. If other safety systems were to fail – and they are untested – there is a possibility of a catastrophic accident on the scale of Chernobyl. The direction of the prevailing wind would take the radioactive plume across Glasgow, Edinburgh and most of the central belt.

Torness

Torness started producing electricity in 1988 and was scheduled to close in 2023. Owners, EDF Energy recently extended this date to 2030. It shares problems of cracking in the graphite core with Hunterston and in addition has had to close down on several occasions in the last decade as a result of jellyfish and seaweed clogging the secondary seawater cooling systems.

We don’t need nuclear

In the past Scotland has generated an energy surplus. In 1989 primary energy capacity in Scotland was 45% more than the level of demand. The margins are now much narrower. Reliance on ageing nuclear capacity rather than planning for non-nuclear green alternatives could result in a shortfall in supply in the future. We can decarbonise through further development of wind, solar, wave and tidal energy. Nuclear is unnecessary, expensive, poses a high risk to health and wellbeing and only exists because it is essential to the nuclear arms programme. Retention of current nuclear capacity is not only high risk but also acts as a barrier to the development of a long-term sustainable system of energy production.

Urgent need for action

EDF want to keep operating both reactors at Hunterston. They have redefined the ‘safe’ limit for the number of permitted cracks in the cores. But the level of risk is just too high. The Westminster Government and EDF are desperate to get Hunterston back on line. Tory policy of building new reactors, rather than investing in renewables, is in tatters as first Toshiba and now Hitachi back out of new build in Cumbria and Wales. The projected cost of energy from the planned Hinckley C reactor far exceeds the cost of wind and solar.

We need to see the end of nuclear as part of a shift to a sustainable economy. The role of a national investment bank and a national energy company is crucial in making a rapid move to clean, safe energy. In the process more than 100,000 new climate jobs could be created in Scotland. While current discussion of these initiatives by the Scottish Government is welcome a much greater sense of urgency and a commitment to a climate jobs strategy is required. Closing Hunterston can be step one in building the campaign is that’s required.

Stopping Oil and Gas Part 3

Daisy Jamieson was the third contributor to Scot.E3’s Glasgow public meeting on stopping North Sea oil and gas. In her talk Daisy reflected on the importance of just transition. Part 1 of the public meeting can be viewed here and part 2 here.