GIORDANO STOLLEY | JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA - Oct 09 2010 08:29
SA needs to re-examine its current policy on biofuels which would see the country use its excess maize without threatening food security, Agriculture Minister Tina Joemat-Pettersson said on Friday.
"It is not only about food production. It is also about energy, development and saving and therefore with the excessive maize surplus, we as a government need to look again at our biofuels policy," she told delegates at the annual AgriSA Congress in Johannesburg.
The country needed to find new markets and opportunities for its agriculture products.
She cautioned that her department alone did not determine the country's biofuel policy.
A national biofuel policy, drawn up in conjunction with commercial farmers, was needed to ensure food security was not threatened.
The Democratic Alliance's deputy energy spokesperson David Ross welcomed Joemat-Pettersson's comments.
"[She] is to be commended for putting aside party differences and moving her department towards the adoption of DA proposals for an end to the ban on South Africa's maize being sold for ethanol production," he said.
The minister told delegates commercial farmers were not the enemies of the African National Congress, but were considered necessary for the country's future prosperity.
She said at the recent ANC's national general council in Durban it had been accepted that commercial agriculture had an important role to play.
"It is the first time in the history of the ANC that the words commercial farmers were not used as a swear word. It was a big breakthrough. It was the first time in the history of the ANC that [farmers] were not seen as the enemy of South Africa, but that commercial farmers are the cornerstone of rural development."
She said the media had focused so much on ANC Youth League leader Julius Malema that it had missed the NGC's "absolute horror and disgust" at the ongoing farm murders.
She told delegates that "expressions made by individuals" didn't necessarily echo ANC policies.
"My role is to speak for all farmers at all levels, not just the small farmers. It is a very difficult task. It is the first time that we accept that ANC politicians also speak on behalf of commercial farmers. That is a huge change that has taken place in our country."
She said she had informed ANC leaders in Durban of the difficulties faced by commercial farmers.
While she would on occasion have differences with farmers, Joemat-Pettersson promised to speak to them before going public with her differences.
Problems facing the agriculture sector included production costs and the strengthening rand. It could only meet the country's future food requirements if energy and electricity problems were properly addressed.
The energy affairs department had recently made efforts, with the assistance of Agri SA, to keep recent diesel price hikes to a minimum.
The minister said her office was forging ahead with the re-establishment of agricultural colleges to train aspiring farmers. - Sapa
Saturday, 9 October 2010
Sewage works to provide gas for 200 homes in Oxfordshire
By Sarah Arnott
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
British homes will be using gas made from human sewage for the first time today as a pioneering £2.5m scheme in Oxfordshire goes live.
Ultimately, the Didcot sewage works could produce enough low-carbon gas to supply 200 local homes, thanks to the joint venture between Thames Water, British Gas and Scotia Gas Network.
Thames Water already produce some £15m-worth of electricity each year by burning gas made from the 2.8 billion litres of sewage produced by the company’s 14 million customers. To turn feed the gas directly into the grid for use by consumers is simply “the logical next step”, according to Martin Baggs, the Thames Water chief executive.
The gas is produced by warming up “sludge” – the solid part of the sewage – for anaerobic digestion by bacteria, which breaks down any biodegradable material and produces biogas.
The “end to end” process from lavatory to gas grid takes around 20 days and the average person produces the equivalent of 30 kilos of dried out sewage-sludge per year. If the sewage from all 63 million people could be used to generate renewable gas, it would meet the demands of 200,000 homes, according to British Gas.
Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, endorsed the scheme yesterday. “This is an historic day for the companies involved, for energy from waste technologies, and for progress to increase the amount of renewable energy in the UK,” he said. “It’s not every day that a Secretary of State can announce that, for the first time ever in the UK, people can cook and heat their homes with gas generated from sewage.”
Tuesday, 5 October 2010
British homes will be using gas made from human sewage for the first time today as a pioneering £2.5m scheme in Oxfordshire goes live.
Ultimately, the Didcot sewage works could produce enough low-carbon gas to supply 200 local homes, thanks to the joint venture between Thames Water, British Gas and Scotia Gas Network.
Thames Water already produce some £15m-worth of electricity each year by burning gas made from the 2.8 billion litres of sewage produced by the company’s 14 million customers. To turn feed the gas directly into the grid for use by consumers is simply “the logical next step”, according to Martin Baggs, the Thames Water chief executive.
The gas is produced by warming up “sludge” – the solid part of the sewage – for anaerobic digestion by bacteria, which breaks down any biodegradable material and produces biogas.
The “end to end” process from lavatory to gas grid takes around 20 days and the average person produces the equivalent of 30 kilos of dried out sewage-sludge per year. If the sewage from all 63 million people could be used to generate renewable gas, it would meet the demands of 200,000 homes, according to British Gas.
Chris Huhne, the Energy Secretary, endorsed the scheme yesterday. “This is an historic day for the companies involved, for energy from waste technologies, and for progress to increase the amount of renewable energy in the UK,” he said. “It’s not every day that a Secretary of State can announce that, for the first time ever in the UK, people can cook and heat their homes with gas generated from sewage.”
U.N. Pact to Cut Airplane Emissions
By DANIEL MICHAELS
Governments from 190 countries agreed late Friday to let the United Nations' aviation body take the global lead on setting standards for limiting the industry's emissions of greenhouse gasses.
The assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization, meeting in Montreal, "adopted a comprehensive resolution to reduce the impact of aviation emissions on climate change" and set "a roadmap for action through 2050," ICAO said in a statement.
For airlines and governments, the agreement provides hope that the different regions and countries will use common standards on aviation emissions —or at least coordinate approaches to avoid duplication and fights. Many airlines and regulators feared that the inherently global industry risked sinking into regional disputes over local regulations.
The deal comes just two months before the same countries are slated to gather in Cancún, Mexico, for talks on a broader deal at the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. The UNFCC failed to reach a global deal last year at Copenhagen, and prospects for a deal at Cancun remain uncertain.
The U.N. body adopted the nonbinding resolution after two weeks of intense negotiations over how far the body should push standards. The European Union, which is already planning to regulate through its emissions-trading program, wanted tough standards, while developing countries such as China and Brazil wanted greater leeway to allow for their fast economic growth, according to people involved in the negotiations.
The deal also potentially marks a success for ICAO, which is one of the U.N.'s largest bodies and has often struggled to unify its many members.
"The resolution on the environment makes ICAO the first United Nations agency to lead a sector in the establishment of a globally harmonized agreement for addressing its CO2 emissions," ICAO said.
"We feel that the Assembly resolution and related decisions are good examples of the spirit of cooperation that can make a substantial contribution to the UNFCCC discussions," said the President of the ICAO Council, Roberto Kobeh González.
Write to Daniel Michaels at daniel.michaels@wsj.com
Governments from 190 countries agreed late Friday to let the United Nations' aviation body take the global lead on setting standards for limiting the industry's emissions of greenhouse gasses.
The assembly of the International Civil Aviation Organization, meeting in Montreal, "adopted a comprehensive resolution to reduce the impact of aviation emissions on climate change" and set "a roadmap for action through 2050," ICAO said in a statement.
For airlines and governments, the agreement provides hope that the different regions and countries will use common standards on aviation emissions —or at least coordinate approaches to avoid duplication and fights. Many airlines and regulators feared that the inherently global industry risked sinking into regional disputes over local regulations.
The deal comes just two months before the same countries are slated to gather in Cancún, Mexico, for talks on a broader deal at the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change. The UNFCC failed to reach a global deal last year at Copenhagen, and prospects for a deal at Cancun remain uncertain.
The U.N. body adopted the nonbinding resolution after two weeks of intense negotiations over how far the body should push standards. The European Union, which is already planning to regulate through its emissions-trading program, wanted tough standards, while developing countries such as China and Brazil wanted greater leeway to allow for their fast economic growth, according to people involved in the negotiations.
The deal also potentially marks a success for ICAO, which is one of the U.N.'s largest bodies and has often struggled to unify its many members.
"The resolution on the environment makes ICAO the first United Nations agency to lead a sector in the establishment of a globally harmonized agreement for addressing its CO2 emissions," ICAO said.
"We feel that the Assembly resolution and related decisions are good examples of the spirit of cooperation that can make a substantial contribution to the UNFCCC discussions," said the President of the ICAO Council, Roberto Kobeh González.
Write to Daniel Michaels at daniel.michaels@wsj.com
How air-conditioning is baking our world
Grist: US homes use as much electricity for air conditioning as the whole of Africa, claims a new book by Stan Cox
• What is the most efficient form of air-conditioning for the home?
Dan Watson for Grist guardian.co.uk, Friday 8 October 2010 10.01 BST
When you think of the causes of global warming, you may picture an SUV before you picture a central AC unit. But almost 20 percent of electricity consumption in U.S. homes goes to AC -- that's as much electricity as the entire continent of Africa uses for all purposes. So says Stan Cox in his new book, Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer).
Cox, a scientist and agricultural researcher who lives in Salina, Kansas, doesn't paint AC as the bogeyman. Rather, he makes the point that our world has developed in many unsustainable directions overall, and air-conditioning has been a crucial part of that development. He also argues that making air-conditioners and other appliances more energy efficient isn't going to get us out of this mess. He spoke to Grist last week about his new book. Open a window, undo a button, and enjoy ...
Q. Why did you write a book on air-conditioning?
A. In the past half-century, a number of big, energy-guzzling technologies have really changed our lives: automobiles, computers, television, jet aircraft. All that time, air-conditioning has been humming away in the background, like a character actor you see in a whole bunch of movies. It's never the star, but it always seems to be there moving the plot along.
When I looked at the doubling in the amount of electricity used for air conditioning homes in this country just since the mid-90s, I thought, we really need to address this, because it is a big contributor to greenhouse-gas release and it's going to increase the likelihood that we're going to have longer, more intense heat waves and hotter summers in the future, and we're going to have to be running the air-conditioning even more.
Q. That seemed to be a theme throughout the book -- that the use of air-conditioning leads to a cycle where it needs to be used more.
A. Yes, the biggest example of that is probably global warming. But there are a lot of ways in which air-conditioning creates need for itself, including by eroding our heat tolerance. Once we've built office buildings and commercial buildings on the assumption of air-conditioning, then we pretty much have to use it. We've created a lot of space that's almost uninhabitable without it. In many buildings, the windows don't open at all anymore.
In the book, I put a lot of emphasis on what's known as the adaptive model of comfort. It's based on surveys of people who are working at different temperatures and asked if they're comfortable. People can psychologically adjust to buildings that are cooler in the winter and warmer in the summer. The comment I've heard most since the book came out is from people who work in offices and complain that their offices are too cold in the summer, and they have to take sweaters or use space heaters, wasting even more energy. Without eroding people's working conditions or quality of life at all, there could be a big savings there.
Q. I thought it was interesting that you linked AC to obesity, in the sense that people are indoors more often and their bodies don't have to work to adjust to the temperature changes during the year.
A. Right, that's one of the hypotheses that a group of medical researchers came up with to explain the rise in obesity -- the slower burning of energy by the body in the comfort range, where it doesn't have to work to either shed heat or generate heat (in addition to the normal explanations that people are eating more and exercising less). Another way AC could be affecting obesity is that people tend to eat more when in cooler conditions. And also, by making the indoors more attractive in the summertime, we've made it less likely that people are going to be outdoors where we're more physically active.
Q. Has the advent of AC led to more social isolation, where we're within our own homes and don't interact as much with the community?
A. That's right. Starting in the South, which led the nation into air-conditioning, you had the erosion of what they called the front-porch culture -- neighbors would drop in on each other when they saw them sitting on the porch, kids would be running up and down the block.
[In the book, there's] an anecdote from a friend of mine who was out in her yard on a June day in Kansas when the power went out, and people started drifting out of their houses, and it sort of turned into an impromptu block party. She noticed nobody seemed to be going in to call the power company. Instead they'd seized the opportunity to socialize and get out of their cold isolation.
Q. AC has spurred a huge migration to hotter climates and drier climates.
A. It has allowed us to put cities in very fragile ecological zones like the desert area where Phoenix is, or the fringes of the Everglades, or actually out into the Everglades now in South Florida. We build up these big Sun Belt cities on the assumption of air-conditioning, so there's limited green space. The heat island effect becomes pretty overwhelming -- all the asphalt, concrete, and steel are trapping heat that's then released throughout the night. In Phoenix you can easily have a lot of nights where the temperature never drops below 90, while in the normal desert climate you get a big drop in temperature.
By virtue of the fact that there was so much cheap land in the Sun Belt, there's been this huge migration from the north and there's much more sprawl in Sun Belt cities, so they're generally more dependent on automobiles. When drivers are stuck in freeway traffic jams, they're using the AC. So you have again this vicious circle where the kind of development that air-conditioning has fostered in the Sun Belt cities requires the use of even more air-conditioning.
Q. You write that energy efficiency is not the answer to our problems. Why?
A. The way economies work, efficiency and total consumption of energy always tend to rise together. Having greater energy efficiency, as a friend of mine likes to say, is like putting energy on sale. We'll find more ways to use it.
Since the mid-90s, residential air-conditioners have increased in efficiency by 28 percent, but the amount of energy used to cool the average household in the U.S. has increased by 37 percent. Part of the reason is that house size has increased dramatically -- we're cooling much more square footage per house. And we've had hotter summers, and more people are turning to central air rather than room cooling. If it had been more expensive to heat and cool a house, we probably wouldn't have had people wanting to build bigger and bigger houses.
There's nothing wrong with greater efficiency, but that has to be preceded by a commitment to put some very hard limits on the total amount of energy or other resources that we're going to use. That limit is going to have to be decreased year by year.
I didn't write the book to call for a ban on air-conditioning, but if we take the sensible route and put overall limits on consumption, then people and businesses might see air-conditioning as a very good place to start cutting back, if they think about some of what we've lost in the age of air-conditioning.
Q. You make the case that we have to cut back our growth and our consumption, but that's not compatible with the way our capitalist economy functions. So what is the potential solution to this?
A. Everybody in a position of power is talking about how to get economic growth racing ahead again, because that's simply the way capitalist economies work -- they have to have continuous growth. Despite some of the things you hear, that growth in the GDP is always going to be linked to growth in consumption of material resources and the generation of waste. Profits have to be generated, and they have to grow not just in the linear fashion, but by a certain percentage each year, and the bigger the economy gets, the more it has to grow in a given year to achieve that percentage. We're reaching the edge of the petri dish here. A lot of footprint analyses show we're already consuming more than one planet can provide. I cite one study by a professor at the University of Utah showing that even in the greenest scenario, using the best green technology, renewable energy and so forth, to stay below 450 ppm CO2, the world economy is going to have to shrink by 1 to 4 percent per year over the next 40 years. We're going to have to have a different economic system, which is much easier said than done.
And the other thing we're going to have to have, which nobody is going to like, is a pretty massive transfer of wealth from wealthy individuals, areas, or countries to those that are less wealthy. When you say we have to reduce the output of the economy by so much each year, there are many, many people in the world that have nothing to reduce. They actually need a bit more production just to get the basic necessities of life. Luxuries like AC have been promoted to the status of necessity, and we're going to have to have an economy that returns to putting the necessities of life first, making sure everybody's got those, and then see what's left.
Unfortunately I'm not, and I'm not sure who is, smart enough to know how to get out of our situation. But I think people do respond to emergencies. A lot of people who lived through World War II or the Depression become very nostalgic about the way people had to share. People saw life as being much more important than the amount of money you made. It's possible, I think, for people to think differently.
• What is the most efficient form of air-conditioning for the home?
Dan Watson for Grist guardian.co.uk, Friday 8 October 2010 10.01 BST
When you think of the causes of global warming, you may picture an SUV before you picture a central AC unit. But almost 20 percent of electricity consumption in U.S. homes goes to AC -- that's as much electricity as the entire continent of Africa uses for all purposes. So says Stan Cox in his new book, Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer).
Cox, a scientist and agricultural researcher who lives in Salina, Kansas, doesn't paint AC as the bogeyman. Rather, he makes the point that our world has developed in many unsustainable directions overall, and air-conditioning has been a crucial part of that development. He also argues that making air-conditioners and other appliances more energy efficient isn't going to get us out of this mess. He spoke to Grist last week about his new book. Open a window, undo a button, and enjoy ...
Q. Why did you write a book on air-conditioning?
A. In the past half-century, a number of big, energy-guzzling technologies have really changed our lives: automobiles, computers, television, jet aircraft. All that time, air-conditioning has been humming away in the background, like a character actor you see in a whole bunch of movies. It's never the star, but it always seems to be there moving the plot along.
When I looked at the doubling in the amount of electricity used for air conditioning homes in this country just since the mid-90s, I thought, we really need to address this, because it is a big contributor to greenhouse-gas release and it's going to increase the likelihood that we're going to have longer, more intense heat waves and hotter summers in the future, and we're going to have to be running the air-conditioning even more.
Q. That seemed to be a theme throughout the book -- that the use of air-conditioning leads to a cycle where it needs to be used more.
A. Yes, the biggest example of that is probably global warming. But there are a lot of ways in which air-conditioning creates need for itself, including by eroding our heat tolerance. Once we've built office buildings and commercial buildings on the assumption of air-conditioning, then we pretty much have to use it. We've created a lot of space that's almost uninhabitable without it. In many buildings, the windows don't open at all anymore.
In the book, I put a lot of emphasis on what's known as the adaptive model of comfort. It's based on surveys of people who are working at different temperatures and asked if they're comfortable. People can psychologically adjust to buildings that are cooler in the winter and warmer in the summer. The comment I've heard most since the book came out is from people who work in offices and complain that their offices are too cold in the summer, and they have to take sweaters or use space heaters, wasting even more energy. Without eroding people's working conditions or quality of life at all, there could be a big savings there.
Q. I thought it was interesting that you linked AC to obesity, in the sense that people are indoors more often and their bodies don't have to work to adjust to the temperature changes during the year.
A. Right, that's one of the hypotheses that a group of medical researchers came up with to explain the rise in obesity -- the slower burning of energy by the body in the comfort range, where it doesn't have to work to either shed heat or generate heat (in addition to the normal explanations that people are eating more and exercising less). Another way AC could be affecting obesity is that people tend to eat more when in cooler conditions. And also, by making the indoors more attractive in the summertime, we've made it less likely that people are going to be outdoors where we're more physically active.
Q. Has the advent of AC led to more social isolation, where we're within our own homes and don't interact as much with the community?
A. That's right. Starting in the South, which led the nation into air-conditioning, you had the erosion of what they called the front-porch culture -- neighbors would drop in on each other when they saw them sitting on the porch, kids would be running up and down the block.
[In the book, there's] an anecdote from a friend of mine who was out in her yard on a June day in Kansas when the power went out, and people started drifting out of their houses, and it sort of turned into an impromptu block party. She noticed nobody seemed to be going in to call the power company. Instead they'd seized the opportunity to socialize and get out of their cold isolation.
Q. AC has spurred a huge migration to hotter climates and drier climates.
A. It has allowed us to put cities in very fragile ecological zones like the desert area where Phoenix is, or the fringes of the Everglades, or actually out into the Everglades now in South Florida. We build up these big Sun Belt cities on the assumption of air-conditioning, so there's limited green space. The heat island effect becomes pretty overwhelming -- all the asphalt, concrete, and steel are trapping heat that's then released throughout the night. In Phoenix you can easily have a lot of nights where the temperature never drops below 90, while in the normal desert climate you get a big drop in temperature.
By virtue of the fact that there was so much cheap land in the Sun Belt, there's been this huge migration from the north and there's much more sprawl in Sun Belt cities, so they're generally more dependent on automobiles. When drivers are stuck in freeway traffic jams, they're using the AC. So you have again this vicious circle where the kind of development that air-conditioning has fostered in the Sun Belt cities requires the use of even more air-conditioning.
Q. You write that energy efficiency is not the answer to our problems. Why?
A. The way economies work, efficiency and total consumption of energy always tend to rise together. Having greater energy efficiency, as a friend of mine likes to say, is like putting energy on sale. We'll find more ways to use it.
Since the mid-90s, residential air-conditioners have increased in efficiency by 28 percent, but the amount of energy used to cool the average household in the U.S. has increased by 37 percent. Part of the reason is that house size has increased dramatically -- we're cooling much more square footage per house. And we've had hotter summers, and more people are turning to central air rather than room cooling. If it had been more expensive to heat and cool a house, we probably wouldn't have had people wanting to build bigger and bigger houses.
There's nothing wrong with greater efficiency, but that has to be preceded by a commitment to put some very hard limits on the total amount of energy or other resources that we're going to use. That limit is going to have to be decreased year by year.
I didn't write the book to call for a ban on air-conditioning, but if we take the sensible route and put overall limits on consumption, then people and businesses might see air-conditioning as a very good place to start cutting back, if they think about some of what we've lost in the age of air-conditioning.
Q. You make the case that we have to cut back our growth and our consumption, but that's not compatible with the way our capitalist economy functions. So what is the potential solution to this?
A. Everybody in a position of power is talking about how to get economic growth racing ahead again, because that's simply the way capitalist economies work -- they have to have continuous growth. Despite some of the things you hear, that growth in the GDP is always going to be linked to growth in consumption of material resources and the generation of waste. Profits have to be generated, and they have to grow not just in the linear fashion, but by a certain percentage each year, and the bigger the economy gets, the more it has to grow in a given year to achieve that percentage. We're reaching the edge of the petri dish here. A lot of footprint analyses show we're already consuming more than one planet can provide. I cite one study by a professor at the University of Utah showing that even in the greenest scenario, using the best green technology, renewable energy and so forth, to stay below 450 ppm CO2, the world economy is going to have to shrink by 1 to 4 percent per year over the next 40 years. We're going to have to have a different economic system, which is much easier said than done.
And the other thing we're going to have to have, which nobody is going to like, is a pretty massive transfer of wealth from wealthy individuals, areas, or countries to those that are less wealthy. When you say we have to reduce the output of the economy by so much each year, there are many, many people in the world that have nothing to reduce. They actually need a bit more production just to get the basic necessities of life. Luxuries like AC have been promoted to the status of necessity, and we're going to have to have an economy that returns to putting the necessities of life first, making sure everybody's got those, and then see what's left.
Unfortunately I'm not, and I'm not sure who is, smart enough to know how to get out of our situation. But I think people do respond to emergencies. A lot of people who lived through World War II or the Depression become very nostalgic about the way people had to share. People saw life as being much more important than the amount of money you made. It's possible, I think, for people to think differently.
Without a true green investment bank there can be no environmental progress
If David Cameron is to deliver his promise of a low-carbon economy, he must demonstrate the political will
Tom Burke
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 October 2010 07.00 BST
David Cameron promised this to be the greenest government ever. Brave words. But it is not yet clear they will be matched by brave actions. Turning blue into green was at the heart of the prime minister's effort to restore his party's electoral fortunes. Greenness is one of the central girders binding the coalition together. So it would be rash to write this promise off as just talk.
But actions will speak louder. So far, they have not been promising. Killing both the royal commission on environmental pollution and the sustainable development commission on the same day was not a great start. Add in the rumoured plan to disembowel Natural England and this is beginning to look like a government intent on stopping anyone knowing what is happening to the environment.
The previous government was far more adept at managing the headlines than the nation. All too often, once it had got the headline it seemed to lose interest in the issue. Hence the intense public suspicion that now greets any ambitious claim from ministers.
There are three things to be done this autumn that will help clarify the seriousness of the prime minister's high ambition.
• The first is an unequivocal statement that Natural England will remain an independent statutory adviser on biodiversity to the government.
• Second: without sufficient public funding for the demonstration plants for carbon capture and storage Britain will be without a credible domestic climate change policy. In the face of the current public expenditure constraints, this will only happen if the energy and climate change secretary, Chris Huhne, has Cameron's full and vigorous support.
• Third: the publication of a parliamentary bill to create a green investment bank, an idea that Cameron name-checked in his conference speech yesterday.
Of the three, the last is the most strategically important. Setting Britain on a fast track to a low-carbon economy is essential if the world is to have any prospect of dealing with climate change. Other countries will not take risks with their economies that we are not prepared to take ourselves. If we do not deal successfully with global warming, such other environmental progress as we might make will be, at best, temporary.
The idea of a green investment bank (GIB) has secured unusually widespread support. Creating one will be a clear sign of the political will to build a low-carbon economy. An independent commission was set up by the chancellor George Osborne when in opposition, and it published an acclaimed report calling for its establishment. All three party manifestos promised to do so. Its formation is in the coalition agreement and was promised in the Queen's speech.
All done by Christmas then? Sadly not. Treasury dislike of the idea is intense. Not that officials are saying so openly. Rather, in the obscurities of the bureaucratic trenches, they are fighting a vicious little war to kill it.
This is how it will be waged. First will be the argument that there is no real role for it. The problem is shortage of viable projects not capital. Then it will be argued that existing funds dedicated to green energy can be bundled up together into something that could be called a GIB.
These are but the Treasury's preliminary skirmish lines. If ministers insist on something more substantive than a mere re-badging of what is already happening, the really heavy bureaucratic artillery will be brought into action.
A long and drawn out battle will begin over the remit and structure of the bank. What exactly should be in its mandate? What should be its legal status? A formidable barrage of technical questions will be raised. They will all be presented as a thoughtful attempt to get it right. In reality, they are designed to wear down supporters of the idea and let events shift political and media attention to other issues.
If the idea survives this barrage, the full force of Treasury ordnance will come into action. It will be argued that both its borrowing and its lending must appear on the government's balance sheet. The message to any minister still standing is that doing this will increase both the deficit and public spending.
If ministers still persist, the bureaucratic equivalent of Little Boy will be deployed. Since no department has bid for the cash to capitalise the GIB, there is no money to subscribe to its capital. The only way to find the £2bn needed for a credible level of capitalisation from central resources would be to top-slice other department's budgets. This move is intended to ensure that every permanent secretary in Whitehall advises their minister to oppose the creation of a GIB.
Winning the war to found a genuine GIB will require real determination and attention to detail on the part of ministers. Should they succeed it will be apparent from four clear markers: the bank will have a mandate wide enough to finance any measure that will reduce carbon emissions; it will be established by statute – this matters a lot as it guarantees its independence of government; it will have a full set of powers including the ability to issue green bonds; its subscribed capital will begin at £2bn.
If any of these four conditions are not met then we will all know that ministers have lost and Treasury officials have won. Whatever the label says, there will not be a GIB inside the box.
The political reality is this. Britain will have a GIB if the prime minister really wants one. If he does not, we will have a Treasury designed label occupying the space where a real bank should be. We will also have answered two very big questions: the seriousness of the prime minister's claim to be green and whether ministers or Treasury officials are really running the country.
Tom Burke is a visiting professor at Imperial and University Colleges, London and a founding director of E3G. A version of this article was originally published in The ENDS report.
Tom Burke
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 October 2010 07.00 BST
David Cameron promised this to be the greenest government ever. Brave words. But it is not yet clear they will be matched by brave actions. Turning blue into green was at the heart of the prime minister's effort to restore his party's electoral fortunes. Greenness is one of the central girders binding the coalition together. So it would be rash to write this promise off as just talk.
But actions will speak louder. So far, they have not been promising. Killing both the royal commission on environmental pollution and the sustainable development commission on the same day was not a great start. Add in the rumoured plan to disembowel Natural England and this is beginning to look like a government intent on stopping anyone knowing what is happening to the environment.
The previous government was far more adept at managing the headlines than the nation. All too often, once it had got the headline it seemed to lose interest in the issue. Hence the intense public suspicion that now greets any ambitious claim from ministers.
There are three things to be done this autumn that will help clarify the seriousness of the prime minister's high ambition.
• The first is an unequivocal statement that Natural England will remain an independent statutory adviser on biodiversity to the government.
• Second: without sufficient public funding for the demonstration plants for carbon capture and storage Britain will be without a credible domestic climate change policy. In the face of the current public expenditure constraints, this will only happen if the energy and climate change secretary, Chris Huhne, has Cameron's full and vigorous support.
• Third: the publication of a parliamentary bill to create a green investment bank, an idea that Cameron name-checked in his conference speech yesterday.
Of the three, the last is the most strategically important. Setting Britain on a fast track to a low-carbon economy is essential if the world is to have any prospect of dealing with climate change. Other countries will not take risks with their economies that we are not prepared to take ourselves. If we do not deal successfully with global warming, such other environmental progress as we might make will be, at best, temporary.
The idea of a green investment bank (GIB) has secured unusually widespread support. Creating one will be a clear sign of the political will to build a low-carbon economy. An independent commission was set up by the chancellor George Osborne when in opposition, and it published an acclaimed report calling for its establishment. All three party manifestos promised to do so. Its formation is in the coalition agreement and was promised in the Queen's speech.
All done by Christmas then? Sadly not. Treasury dislike of the idea is intense. Not that officials are saying so openly. Rather, in the obscurities of the bureaucratic trenches, they are fighting a vicious little war to kill it.
This is how it will be waged. First will be the argument that there is no real role for it. The problem is shortage of viable projects not capital. Then it will be argued that existing funds dedicated to green energy can be bundled up together into something that could be called a GIB.
These are but the Treasury's preliminary skirmish lines. If ministers insist on something more substantive than a mere re-badging of what is already happening, the really heavy bureaucratic artillery will be brought into action.
A long and drawn out battle will begin over the remit and structure of the bank. What exactly should be in its mandate? What should be its legal status? A formidable barrage of technical questions will be raised. They will all be presented as a thoughtful attempt to get it right. In reality, they are designed to wear down supporters of the idea and let events shift political and media attention to other issues.
If the idea survives this barrage, the full force of Treasury ordnance will come into action. It will be argued that both its borrowing and its lending must appear on the government's balance sheet. The message to any minister still standing is that doing this will increase both the deficit and public spending.
If ministers still persist, the bureaucratic equivalent of Little Boy will be deployed. Since no department has bid for the cash to capitalise the GIB, there is no money to subscribe to its capital. The only way to find the £2bn needed for a credible level of capitalisation from central resources would be to top-slice other department's budgets. This move is intended to ensure that every permanent secretary in Whitehall advises their minister to oppose the creation of a GIB.
Winning the war to found a genuine GIB will require real determination and attention to detail on the part of ministers. Should they succeed it will be apparent from four clear markers: the bank will have a mandate wide enough to finance any measure that will reduce carbon emissions; it will be established by statute – this matters a lot as it guarantees its independence of government; it will have a full set of powers including the ability to issue green bonds; its subscribed capital will begin at £2bn.
If any of these four conditions are not met then we will all know that ministers have lost and Treasury officials have won. Whatever the label says, there will not be a GIB inside the box.
The political reality is this. Britain will have a GIB if the prime minister really wants one. If he does not, we will have a Treasury designed label occupying the space where a real bank should be. We will also have answered two very big questions: the seriousness of the prime minister's claim to be green and whether ministers or Treasury officials are really running the country.
Tom Burke is a visiting professor at Imperial and University Colleges, London and a founding director of E3G. A version of this article was originally published in The ENDS report.
Without a true green investment bank there can be no environmental progress
If David Cameron is to deliver his promise of a low-carbon economy, he must demonstrate the political will
Tom Burke
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 October 2010 07.00 BST
David Cameron promised this to be the greenest government ever. Brave words. But it is not yet clear they will be matched by brave actions. Turning blue into green was at the heart of the prime minister's effort to restore his party's electoral fortunes. Greenness is one of the central girders binding the coalition together. So it would be rash to write this promise off as just talk.
But actions will speak louder. So far, they have not been promising. Killing both the royal commission on environmental pollution and the sustainable development commission on the same day was not a great start. Add in the rumoured plan to disembowel Natural England and this is beginning to look like a government intent on stopping anyone knowing what is happening to the environment.
The previous government was far more adept at managing the headlines than the nation. All too often, once it had got the headline it seemed to lose interest in the issue. Hence the intense public suspicion that now greets any ambitious claim from ministers.
There are three things to be done this autumn that will help clarify the seriousness of the prime minister's high ambition.
• The first is an unequivocal statement that Natural England will remain an independent statutory adviser on biodiversity to the government.
• Second: without sufficient public funding for the demonstration plants for carbon capture and storage Britain will be without a credible domestic climate change policy. In the face of the current public expenditure constraints, this will only happen if the energy and climate change secretary, Chris Huhne, has Cameron's full and vigorous support.
• Third: the publication of a parliamentary bill to create a green investment bank, an idea that Cameron name-checked in his conference speech yesterday.
Of the three, the last is the most strategically important. Setting Britain on a fast track to a low-carbon economy is essential if the world is to have any prospect of dealing with climate change. Other countries will not take risks with their economies that we are not prepared to take ourselves. If we do not deal successfully with global warming, such other environmental progress as we might make will be, at best, temporary.
The idea of a green investment bank (GIB) has secured unusually widespread support. Creating one will be a clear sign of the political will to build a low-carbon economy. An independent commission was set up by the chancellor George Osborne when in opposition, and it published an acclaimed report calling for its establishment. All three party manifestos promised to do so. Its formation is in the coalition agreement and was promised in the Queen's speech.
All done by Christmas then? Sadly not. Treasury dislike of the idea is intense. Not that officials are saying so openly. Rather, in the obscurities of the bureaucratic trenches, they are fighting a vicious little war to kill it.
This is how it will be waged. First will be the argument that there is no real role for it. The problem is shortage of viable projects not capital. Then it will be argued that existing funds dedicated to green energy can be bundled up together into something that could be called a GIB.
These are but the Treasury's preliminary skirmish lines. If ministers insist on something more substantive than a mere re-badging of what is already happening, the really heavy bureaucratic artillery will be brought into action.
A long and drawn out battle will begin over the remit and structure of the bank. What exactly should be in its mandate? What should be its legal status? A formidable barrage of technical questions will be raised. They will all be presented as a thoughtful attempt to get it right. In reality, they are designed to wear down supporters of the idea and let events shift political and media attention to other issues.
If the idea survives this barrage, the full force of Treasury ordnance will come into action. It will be argued that both its borrowing and its lending must appear on the government's balance sheet. The message to any minister still standing is that doing this will increase both the deficit and public spending.
If ministers still persist, the bureaucratic equivalent of Little Boy will be deployed. Since no department has bid for the cash to capitalise the GIB, there is no money to subscribe to its capital. The only way to find the £2bn needed for a credible level of capitalisation from central resources would be to top-slice other department's budgets. This move is intended to ensure that every permanent secretary in Whitehall advises their minister to oppose the creation of a GIB.
Winning the war to found a genuine GIB will require real determination and attention to detail on the part of ministers. Should they succeed it will be apparent from four clear markers: the bank will have a mandate wide enough to finance any measure that will reduce carbon emissions; it will be established by statute – this matters a lot as it guarantees its independence of government; it will have a full set of powers including the ability to issue green bonds; its subscribed capital will begin at £2bn.
If any of these four conditions are not met then we will all know that ministers have lost and Treasury officials have won. Whatever the label says, there will not be a GIB inside the box.
The political reality is this. Britain will have a GIB if the prime minister really wants one. If he does not, we will have a Treasury designed label occupying the space where a real bank should be. We will also have answered two very big questions: the seriousness of the prime minister's claim to be green and whether ministers or Treasury officials are really running the country.
Tom Burke is a visiting professor at Imperial and University Colleges, London and a founding director of E3G. A version of this article was originally published in The ENDS report.
Tom Burke
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 7 October 2010 07.00 BST
David Cameron promised this to be the greenest government ever. Brave words. But it is not yet clear they will be matched by brave actions. Turning blue into green was at the heart of the prime minister's effort to restore his party's electoral fortunes. Greenness is one of the central girders binding the coalition together. So it would be rash to write this promise off as just talk.
But actions will speak louder. So far, they have not been promising. Killing both the royal commission on environmental pollution and the sustainable development commission on the same day was not a great start. Add in the rumoured plan to disembowel Natural England and this is beginning to look like a government intent on stopping anyone knowing what is happening to the environment.
The previous government was far more adept at managing the headlines than the nation. All too often, once it had got the headline it seemed to lose interest in the issue. Hence the intense public suspicion that now greets any ambitious claim from ministers.
There are three things to be done this autumn that will help clarify the seriousness of the prime minister's high ambition.
• The first is an unequivocal statement that Natural England will remain an independent statutory adviser on biodiversity to the government.
• Second: without sufficient public funding for the demonstration plants for carbon capture and storage Britain will be without a credible domestic climate change policy. In the face of the current public expenditure constraints, this will only happen if the energy and climate change secretary, Chris Huhne, has Cameron's full and vigorous support.
• Third: the publication of a parliamentary bill to create a green investment bank, an idea that Cameron name-checked in his conference speech yesterday.
Of the three, the last is the most strategically important. Setting Britain on a fast track to a low-carbon economy is essential if the world is to have any prospect of dealing with climate change. Other countries will not take risks with their economies that we are not prepared to take ourselves. If we do not deal successfully with global warming, such other environmental progress as we might make will be, at best, temporary.
The idea of a green investment bank (GIB) has secured unusually widespread support. Creating one will be a clear sign of the political will to build a low-carbon economy. An independent commission was set up by the chancellor George Osborne when in opposition, and it published an acclaimed report calling for its establishment. All three party manifestos promised to do so. Its formation is in the coalition agreement and was promised in the Queen's speech.
All done by Christmas then? Sadly not. Treasury dislike of the idea is intense. Not that officials are saying so openly. Rather, in the obscurities of the bureaucratic trenches, they are fighting a vicious little war to kill it.
This is how it will be waged. First will be the argument that there is no real role for it. The problem is shortage of viable projects not capital. Then it will be argued that existing funds dedicated to green energy can be bundled up together into something that could be called a GIB.
These are but the Treasury's preliminary skirmish lines. If ministers insist on something more substantive than a mere re-badging of what is already happening, the really heavy bureaucratic artillery will be brought into action.
A long and drawn out battle will begin over the remit and structure of the bank. What exactly should be in its mandate? What should be its legal status? A formidable barrage of technical questions will be raised. They will all be presented as a thoughtful attempt to get it right. In reality, they are designed to wear down supporters of the idea and let events shift political and media attention to other issues.
If the idea survives this barrage, the full force of Treasury ordnance will come into action. It will be argued that both its borrowing and its lending must appear on the government's balance sheet. The message to any minister still standing is that doing this will increase both the deficit and public spending.
If ministers still persist, the bureaucratic equivalent of Little Boy will be deployed. Since no department has bid for the cash to capitalise the GIB, there is no money to subscribe to its capital. The only way to find the £2bn needed for a credible level of capitalisation from central resources would be to top-slice other department's budgets. This move is intended to ensure that every permanent secretary in Whitehall advises their minister to oppose the creation of a GIB.
Winning the war to found a genuine GIB will require real determination and attention to detail on the part of ministers. Should they succeed it will be apparent from four clear markers: the bank will have a mandate wide enough to finance any measure that will reduce carbon emissions; it will be established by statute – this matters a lot as it guarantees its independence of government; it will have a full set of powers including the ability to issue green bonds; its subscribed capital will begin at £2bn.
If any of these four conditions are not met then we will all know that ministers have lost and Treasury officials have won. Whatever the label says, there will not be a GIB inside the box.
The political reality is this. Britain will have a GIB if the prime minister really wants one. If he does not, we will have a Treasury designed label occupying the space where a real bank should be. We will also have answered two very big questions: the seriousness of the prime minister's claim to be green and whether ministers or Treasury officials are really running the country.
Tom Burke is a visiting professor at Imperial and University Colleges, London and a founding director of E3G. A version of this article was originally published in The ENDS report.