It’s a while since I’ve written a post, ‘John A’ having contributed last week’s piece. So here are a few things that caught my eye over the last fortnight while I’ve been doing other things.Our small and crowded island is still fortunate in having some lovely countryside which has been preserved as a result of sensible planning laws. On the other hand it has been recognised for some time that there is a housing shortage. The problem here is that more houses means less countryside, and this is likely to lead to protests. What to do?
Our very resourceful government — in matters of spin at least — had no difficulty finding an answer; a bit of creative re-branding:
The village of Ford in West Sussex was turned on its head last April when the Government announced it was a “favoured location” to become an eco¬town. One of 10 spots to be transformed into a carbon¬neutral settlement, it would have more than 5,000 sustainably powered homes built on and around it. To encourage residents to take up a more eco-friendly lifestyle, it would be given impeccable new ‘”green” credentials.
Car journeys would be curtailed by a l8mph speed limit. Bath water would be recycled and fed to communal flowerbeds. Each home would pump excess power generated by its solar panels and turbines back into the National Grid. It all sounded very worthy.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/5858971/How-Ben-Fogle-helped-save-his-village-from-becoming-an-eco-town.html
And very expensive too. Bog-standard houses are expensive enough to put them beyond the reach of first time buyers, and the urgent need is for low cost housing. Eco-homes come with so many bells and whistles that they are something that only the affluent can afford.
When the then housing minister, Caroline Flint, unveiled the towns shortlisted to be “eco-fied”, she stated that “we will revolutionise how people live”. It sounded more like Nineteen Eighty-Four than the dawn of a green revolution. New developments, given a lick of green paint, could be forced onto towns like Ford, where similar projects would previously have been rejected. The word “eco” would make residents feel guilty if they voiced opposition. It would allow the Government to feel smug about its environmental friendliness, and to steamroller its developments through. Wrap something in green recycled paper and you’ll get away with anything. But Flint hadn’t reckoned on the power of local feeling.
That was a mistake, because the people of Ford seem to be a pretty feisty lot who were quite ready do a bit of campaigning and demonstrating to prevent a vast area of Grade 1 agricultural land being concreted over and their rural community being destroyed. They even attempted a bit of consultation with their opponents:
Caroline Flint was invited to Ford. She appeared so fleetingly that she left her car running outside Yapton town hall, which was hardly very green. Locals were astonished by her attitude. She was dismissive and uninterested, and criticised us for being too “organised and educated”.
I’m delighted to say that the government has now decided that an eco-town will not be built at Ford, and so is the author of this article whose family home would have been subsumed in the new development. As he was writing in the Sunday Telegraph, might he be some crusty old reactionary breathing fire and baying for the blood of any leftie cabinet minister impertinent enough to challenge his world view? Well no actually, it was written by Ben Fogle, who is young and a committed green.
Then this cartoon by the incomparable Matt turned up at the back of the same newspaper:
Returning to the antics of politicians, here is something that the chairman of the House of Commons’ Innovations, Science and Skills Committee recently confided to the BBC:
Mr Willis said the government had “a good record” in funding scientific research.
“But it’s how you use that science,” he added.
“For example, we’ve got a huge climate change agenda, we’ve got a huge energy agenda. Where are we using the scientific and engineering advice?“Unless at the policy stage ministers are urged to ask that basic question, ‘Where is the evidence to support our policy and if there isn’t, how do we get it?’
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8164383.stm
Which suggests that the debate over whether climate science drives policy, or politicians drive climate science, is well and truly over for all rational people. I suppose that Mr Willis felt safe making such an admission when he was talking to those very sympathetic folk at the BBC.
I don’t often post comments on other blogs, but last week I put a couple up at the Spectator and, while doing so, this outburst from a committed advocate of AGW who was losing an argument with a sceptic caught my eye, although it wasn’t aimed at me:
Your blind refusal to actually countenance that thousands of educated individuals may know something you don’t is hubris of the first order.
I just happened to know something about the person who it was aimed at. No doubt he was too modest to explain that he is remarkably well educated, and in a tradition that taught people to think for themselves rather than simply accept what they are told. Manchester Grammar School and an MA from Oxford if I remember correctly.
Education doesn’t come much better than that does it? Along the way he probably learned that ad hominem attacks and rudeness in debate are unconvincing. And then again, in that kind education you also tend to pick up a certain amount of good old-fashioned logic; learning that arguments from authority are fallacious perhaps. A useful example would be not accepting what people tell you just because they are well educated.
By coincidence, I came across this a day or two later:
Have you ever thought about how far the contents of your supermarket basket have travelled to get to you and how this impacts on our planet’s systems? It’s no secret that climate change is caused by our over dependence on fossil fuels. So what can we do about it? This is an album with a difference. You get the chance to find out how your personal shopping choices are affecting the climate.
http://www.sciencelive.org/component/option,com_mediadb/task,play/idstr,Open-feeds_y161_introducing_environment_y161_introenv_intro_mp3/vv,-1/Itemid,98
Was this gem found on some deep green activist website? No, it comes from a podcast labelled ‘Introducing Environment’ on a website used by the Open University. I’m sure that the department responsible turns out some really well educated graduates who know just how to think for themselves. It’s actually worth clicking on the link and listening to the audio; nostalgic for anyone who can remember Children’s Hour too.
Tony, Ford is not too far from where I currently live, and there is one other thing about this area that I thought would rule it out. From what I can see it’s on a flood plain, and aren’t we going to get all sorts of sea-level rise and extra flooding??? Opps that’s right we can cherry pick our disasters to suit our agenda. Don’t they make you sick? The one thing all current government ministers have in common is the trait that Caroline Flint demonstrated that of being dismissive and uninterested. They just don’t get it do they. And by the way there is not much in the way of employment in this area as my wife can testify to, so what are all these people going to do?? Oh I know they will all get on the train to London, or drive 30miles to somewhere. That’s bound to save energy.
Peter:
I undestand that the four eco-towns that were approved are all on brownfield sites, but the folk in Norfolk don’t quite see it that way. If there is a change of govenment I hope that this is one policy decision that will bite the dust. It seems to be the product of dogma, deviousness and political expediency, not common sense.
There has been no shortage of controversy about the development at Rackheath, which is a few miles north-east of Norwich and was an issue during the Norwich North by-election. Labour candidate Chris Ostrowski supported it, Chloe Smith is against it for “being imposed straight from London”, according to the BBC. And this is what Green Party candidate Rupert Read had to say: “Every town should be an eco-town – that is what the Green New Deal is about. Rackheath can’t be seen as an eco-town. It has terrible public transport links and people are going to be commuting from there to somewhere else.”
As Peter has mentioned, employment and transport are likely to be sticking points. Some people will be able to tele-commute, others will be minding the homes and looking after pre-school age children. A few may be able to find work locally, either in the development or in neighbouring villages in the Broadland area. But otherwise they will need to use their cars to commute out of the immediate area, although there is a new rail station planned on the Bittern Line, and I think it possible there could be a new bus service into Norwich, where commuters could either work or transfer on to trains and buses from there.
The Wikipedia entry on Rackheath is interesting (although the usual Wikipedia caveats apply) as it mentions a proposed new dual carriageway in the area, which does not appear as such on the eco-town’s “masterplan map”. Here’s a link to the eco-community’s own website.
Regarding cars, I remember reading last year about ideas being mooted about how to discourage car use in eco-towns, in order to hit government CO2 targets. This is from an article in the Telegraph from June 2008: “The charging plans have been put forward by developers as a way of meeting the Government’s targets to reduce carbon emissions by cutting car use by half. They could include a fee for a parking space on the edge of the town, a fee for driving out at peak traffic times or penalties for taking a car out of town above a certain number of journeys.” I presume it could be accomplished using an electronic card system and barriers at the town exit roads, or maybe some kind of tagging system (?)
This leaves me wondering whether the future inhabitants of this development will include a small number able to work from home or travel by bus/train/bike into Norwich, and a larger number well-heeled enough not to mind the exorbitant fees for using their cars (and possibly driving the latest hybrids, in order to assuage their consciences.) Will this be another case of the law of unintended consequences striking again?
Alex the law of unintended consequences will most defiantly strike if any of these measures over car useage are implemented. I am reminded of the many stories involving a carrot and a stick. Why is it that when we are lectured to over how we should bring up our children, we are encouraged to use the carrot. However these same numpties are going to use ever more sticks to try and force the population down a path that no one seems to readily agree with. Why can they not see that using a carrot may actually deliver what they want?
By the way just who do they imagine will aford these properties?
Peter, I think that’s a good question; my view is that these properties will appeal mainly to fairly affluent middle-class couples or families who have “green” aspirations. It’s interesting to look at one of the best-known examples we have of an existing eco-town – BedZED, or the Beddington Zero Energy Development in Sutton, just south of London. I haven’t yet found a document or website that has a breakdown by income of BedZED’s inhabitants, but there have been some recent internet articles that are revealing.
Here’s a detailed article by Thomas Lane that appeared on building.co.uk last month. It provides fascinating reading about the various forms of green technology, some of which have worked (albeit with problems, such as overheating solar panels) and others of which have failed (the biomass heating system and the “Living Machine” wastewater treatment system.)
Regarding car use: “A key part of the aspiration behind BedZed was to reduce reliance on cars and promote locally sourced food. Many people chose to live at there because they liked the idea of minimising their impact on the environment.”
(Unlike Rackheath at present, BedZED actually does have good public transport links – for instance, it is 5 minutes’ walk from Hackbridge Station, which is only 20 minutes from Victoria.)
“Car ownership is lower than average, and people with children complain it is difficult to get around Sutton without one. The attempt to promote electric cars has flopped – the idea was to have 40 of them but currently no residents own one. The electric car parking points look sad; most are bent over by inaccurate car-reversing manoeuvres. Parking is also a source of ire to residents. “There are only three visitor parking spaces and there is an ongoing discussion with Peabody to provide more parking,” says Paul Thomas, who doesn’t have a car but has friends who visit by car. Some people park their cars on local residential roads, which has caused friction with other residents. Ironically, the benefits of low car ownership is negated because BedZed’s reasonably affluent residents fly more than the UK average.” (I’d urge you to read the entire article; it also dwells on problems with the allotments, composting and leaking roof gardens.)
Here’s another recent article; this is on the website of BioRegional, the charity who (along with the Peabody Trust and Arup) were behind the BedZED project. BioRegional’s director Sue Riddlestone says: “Despite the flying, the average BedZED residents’ CO2 emissions total 9.9 tonnes, compared to the UK average of 11.9 tonnes per year. “Keen” residents only emit 6 tonnes. Electricity use is very low – 45% lower than in the local area, hot water for washing and heating is a staggering 81% less and water use is 40% lower.”
If my maths is accurate, the “keen” residents’ carbon footprints are about half the UK average, while the average BedZED residents’ carbon footprints amount to a reduction of just under 17%, which would appear to be rather modest savings.
Alex
I have read the first article. Some very interesting and hardly surprising results in that article. Let me firstly state that I am passionately in favour of us building better dwellings that use less power, and thereby saving our precious resources. The list of reasons to do this is extensive and compelling, however saving emissions of “Carbon” is not one of them and this is where these developments will all go wrong. Their hearts are in the right place but they have left their brains in the pub.
I think the conclusion is that the passive methods have all worked, but the CHP was a flop and the water too expensive. I know nothing of an expert nature about water, so won’t comment other than to say most engineers would say “not surprising” given the principle of “economies of scale”. However, they are not the first to fall for the sustainable power from local biomass trick, and probably not the last.
These small CHP systems if built in the middle of a well developed urban environment have got no chance of working. There are usually 2 reasons for this, technical, and financial, the former usually contributing the coup de grâce in the form of the latter. This development is no different and the generator engines inability to run on crude gas produced from heating wood is common knowledge. In the 90’s I despaired of all the stupid Bus engineers around the country running buses on corn oil and other recycled petroleum products just for the publicity. The company I worked for was (still is) a leader in diesel engine emission control and produce engines that consistently use less fuel at reduced emissions levels with greater durability and reliability. The one thing essential to meeting statuary requirements is clean and consistent fuel quality. The buses were running around pretending to be green using fuels that came nowhere near the required quality and ran around producing completely unknown and unmeasured levels of pollutants.
Industrial Gas engines are of a level of complication above that of standard petrol or diesel engines, not withstanding that today they all use sophisticated electronics. And because of all the sophistication, and I might add expensive and exotic materials they contain, it is ridiculous to think they will be successful in these crude and simplistic CHP schemes. And we don’t have to experiment with real people to find these technical issues. Six months in a test cell will tell you all you need to know. In fact 1000 hours of accelerated testing would probably do.
Financially local power has a problem in that it takes I would imagine 10 time the area of land that the houses stand on to provide a reasonable supply of fuel. So where is the saving there? Where do they grow the food? How big would London be if we all lived this way? The fact is that 99.9% of the population would refuse to live this way. Also where does the tax system step into all of this? Mr. Brown has a grubby track record of encouraging the use of alternate fuel with low or no duty, and just when the enterprise is locked in and committed slapping on duty destroying the economics of the venture. These experimental schemes only appear viable because they ignore tax.
I believe the best way for us to provide electrical power in Britain is to have the base load provided mainly by nuclear with clean coal, supplemented by gas thats easier to regulate during peak time. We should also invest in power shaving schemes using all the standby generating capacity that sits around country never being used. Ironically very often when it is called to action it either won’t start or fails. The French do it and so did the US. All it takes is some application of grey cells. But whilst we are dominated by the “Carbon” issue there is very little joined up thinking anywhere. In fact if we just sorted and renewed our grid we may save far more that numpty Milibands 7000 windmills.
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TonyN,
You say “the debate over whether climate science drives policy, or politicians drive climate science”. What debate is that then?
How about considering the possibility that neither are true? How about considering that climate science is what it is, the considered opinion of of the vast majority of climate and other scientists, and that politicians are having a lot of difficulty in knowing how to respond to that? In fact, they probably have a lot of difficulty in knowing how they are able to respond to that.
Many of them owe too many favours to their financial backers, the fossil fuel industries know how to pay for and collect these favours, and many others are concerned that their Daily Mail reading electorate won’t take kindly to being told that things need to change.
If it’s any comfort to you, I’m feeling a bit pessimistic at the moment. What cheers me up a little is that all our descendants will, in a 100 or so years time, probably take an interest in what their forebears wrote on the internet. If they are facing severe environmental problems, as I fear they well might be, and if they are reading this, I can only apologise for not being better able to knock a bit of sense into their thick-headed great-grandparents!
PeterM
Don’t come down too hard on TonyN; there is no need for you to “apologise for not being better able to knock a bit of sense into” his “thick head”.
Nor should he have to apologize for not having been better able to knock a bit of sense into your thick head.
You believe in the “dangerous AGW” premise. He does not. Neither of you is responsible for changing the other’s mind.
Robin’s question “do politicians drive climate science or does climate science drive politics?” is a valid “chicken and egg” question.
My vote would go for the former premise (as John Daly has outlined very concisely in his “history of AGW” treatise, which I cited on the NS blog), viz. Thatcher vs. Scargill, birth of CRU, setting up of IPCC, massive taxpayer funding of pro-AGW research by politicians to provide support for an even more massive (direct or indirect) carbon tax, etc.
You may believe the latter premise but, if so, you should try to defend it with some logical reasoning, as Daly has done.
Max