[GJM] we could be fossil fuel free in 20 years.....

[EcoTort]

 From The Guardian>>>


Last year, the German government published a study of the effects of 
linking the electricity networks of all the countries in Europe and 
connecting them to north Africa and Iceland with high-voltage 
direct-current cables. This would open up a much greater variety of 
renewable power sources. Every country in the network would then be able 
to rely on stable and predictable supplies from elsewhere: 
hydroelectricity in Scandanavia and the Alps, geothermal energy in 
Iceland and vast solar thermal farms in the Sahara. By spreading the 
demand across a much wider network, it suggests that 80% of Europe's 
electricity could be produced from renewable power without any greater 
risk of blackouts or flickers.

At about the same time, Mark Barrett, of University College London, 
published a preliminary study looking mainly at ways of altering the 
pattern of demand for electricity to match the variable supply from wind 
and waves and tidal power. At about twice the current price, he found 
that we might be able to produce as much as 95% of our electricity from 
renewable sources without causing interruptions in the power supply.

Now a new study by the Centre for Alternative Technology takes this even 
further. It is due to be published next week, but I have been allowed a 
preview. It is remarkable in two respects: it suggests that by 2027 we 
could produce 100% of our electricity without the use of fossil fuels or 
nuclear power, and that we could do so while almost tripling its supply: 
our heating systems (using electricity to drive heat pumps) and our 
transport systems could be mostly powered by it.

It relies on a great expansion of electricity storage: building new 
hydroelectric reservoirs into which water can be pumped when electricity 
is abundant, constructing giant vanadium flow batteries and linking 
electric cars up to the grid when they are parked, using their batteries 
to meet fluctuations in demand. It contains some optimistic technical 
assumptions, but also a very pessimistic one: that the UK relies 
entirely on its own energy supplies. If the German proposal were to be 
combined with these ideas, we could begin to see how we might reliably 
move towards a world without fossil fuels.

If Hansen is correct, to avert the meltdown that brings the Holocene to 
an end we require a sort of political "albedo flip". The government must 
immediately commission studies to discover how much of our energy could 
be produced without fossil fuels, set that as its target and then turn 
the economy round to meet it. But a power shift like this cannot take 
place without a power shift of another kind: we need a government which 
fears planetary meltdown more than it fears the CBI.


 


  Stop doing the CBI's bidding, and we could be fossil fuel free in 20 years

Prospects for renewable power are promising. But it means nothing if the 
public interest is drowned by corporate power

*George Monbiot
Tuesday July 3, 2007
The Guardian <http://www.guardian.co.uk>*

Reading a scientific paper on the train this weekend, I found, to my 
amazement, that my hands were shaking. This has never happened to me 
before, but nor have I ever read anything like it. Published by a team 
led by James Hansen at Nasa, it suggests that the grim reports issued by 
the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change could be absurdly optimistic.

The IPCC predicts that sea levels could rise by as much as 59cm this 
century. Hansen's paper argues that the slow melting of ice sheets the 
panel expects doesn't fit the data. The geological record suggests that 
ice at the poles does not melt in a gradual and linear fashion, but 
flips suddenly from one state to another. When temperatures increased to 
between two and three degrees above today's level 3.5 million years ago, 
sea levels rose not by 59cm but by 25 metres. The ice responded 
immediately to changes in temperature.

We now have a pretty good idea of why ice sheets collapse. The 
buttresses that prevent them from sliding into the sea break up; 
meltwater trickles down to their base causing them suddenly to slip; and 
pools of water form on the surface, making the ice darker so that it 
absorbs more heat. These processes are already taking place in Greenland 
and west Antarctica.

Rather than taking thousands of years to melt, as the IPCC predicts, 
Hansen and his team find it "implausible" that the expected warming 
before 2100 "would permit a west Antarctic ice sheet of present size to 
survive even for a century". As well as drowning most of the world's 
centres of population, a sudden disintegration could lead to much higher 
rises in global temperature, because less ice means less heat reflected 
back into space. The new paper suggests that the temperature could 
therefore be twice as sensitive to rising greenhouse gases than the IPCC 
assumes. "Civilisation developed," Hansen writes, "during a period of 
unusual climate stability, the Holocene, now almost 12,000 years in 
duration. That period is about to end."

I looked up from the paper, almost expecting to see crowds stampeding 
through the streets. I saw people chatting outside a riverside pub. The 
other passengers on the train snoozed over their newspapers or played on 
their mobile phones. Unaware of the causes of our good fortune, 
blissfully detached from their likely termination, we drift into 
catastrophe.

Or we are led there. A good source tells me that the British government 
is well aware that its target for cutting carbon emissions - 60% by 2050 
- is too little too late, but that it will go no further for one reason: 
it fears losing the support of the Confederation of British Industry. 
Why this body is allowed to keep holding a gun to our heads has never 
been explained, but Gordon Brown has just appointed Digby Jones, its 
former director-general, as a minister in the department responsible for 
energy policy. I don't remember voting for him. There could be no 
clearer signal that the public interest is being drowned by corporate 
power.

The government's energy programme, partly as a result, is characterised 
by a complete absence of vision. You can see this most clearly when you 
examine its plans for renewables. The EU has set a target for 20% of all 
energy in the member states to come from renewable sources by 2020. This 
in itself is pathetic. But the government refuses to adopt it: instead 
it proposes that 20% of our electricity (just part of our total energy 
use) should come from renewable power by that date. Even this is not a 
target, just an "aspiration", and we are on course to miss it. Worse 
still, the government has no idea what happens after that. Last week I 
asked whether it had commissioned any research to discover how much more 
electricity we could generate from renewable sources. It has not.

It's a critical question, whose answer - if its results were applied 
globally - could determine whether or not the planetary "albedo flip" 
that Hansen predicts takes place. There has been remarkably little 
investigation of this issue. Until recently I guessed that the maximum 
contribution from renewables would be something like 50%: beyond that 
point the difficulties of storing electricity and balancing the grid 
could become overwhelming. But three papers now suggest that we could go 
much further.

Last year, the German government published a study of the effects of 
linking the electricity networks of all the countries in Europe and 
connecting them to north Africa and Iceland with high-voltage 
direct-current cables. This would open up a much greater variety of 
renewable power sources. Every country in the network would then be able 
to rely on stable and predictable supplies from elsewhere: 
hydroelectricity in Scandanavia and the Alps, geothermal energy in 
Iceland and vast solar thermal farms in the Sahara. By spreading the 
demand across a much wider network, it suggests that 80% of Europe's 
electricity could be produced from renewable power without any greater 
risk of blackouts or flickers.

At about the same time, Mark Barrett, of University College London, 
published a preliminary study looking mainly at ways of altering the 
pattern of demand for electricity to match the variable supply from wind 
and waves and tidal power. At about twice the current price, he found 
that we might be able to produce as much as 95% of our electricity from 
renewable sources without causing interruptions in the power supply.

Now a new study by the Centre for Alternative Technology takes this even 
further. It is due to be published next week, but I have been allowed a 
preview. It is remarkable in two respects: it suggests that by 2027 we 
could produce 100% of our electricity without the use of fossil fuels or 
nuclear power, and that we could do so while almost tripling its supply: 
our heating systems (using electricity to drive heat pumps) and our 
transport systems could be mostly powered by it.

It relies on a great expansion of electricity storage: building new 
hydroelectric reservoirs into which water can be pumped when electricity 
is abundant, constructing giant vanadium flow batteries and linking 
electric cars up to the grid when they are parked, using their batteries 
to meet fluctuations in demand. It contains some optimistic technical 
assumptions, but also a very pessimistic one: that the UK relies 
entirely on its own energy supplies. If the German proposal were to be 
combined with these ideas, we could begin to see how we might reliably 
move towards a world without fossil fuels.

If Hansen is correct, to avert the meltdown that brings the Holocene to 
an end we require a sort of political "albedo flip". The government must 
immediately commission studies to discover how much of our energy could 
be produced without fossil fuels, set that as its target and then turn 
the economy round to meet it. But a power shift like this cannot take 
place without a power shift of another kind: we need a government which 
fears planetary meltdown more than it fears the CBI.

monbiot.com <http://www.monbiot.com>

> >>>>>>>>> 

 

*Gareth Strangemore-Jones*

*Campaign Promotions
(T) + 44 (0)2920 493100 *

*(F) + 44 (0)2920 020432
(E) gareth at campaignpromotions.org 
<http://uk.f234.mail.yahoo.com/ym/gareth@campaignpromotions.org>
(W) www.campaignpromotions.org <http://www.campaignpromotions.org/>

Campaign Promotions provides Marketing, PR, Events and Communications 
for SMCC's (Small & Medium-sized Charities and Campaigns); SSME's 
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*Ecoshelter is a new SE/NFP Coalition providing sustainable living 
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<http://www.ecoshelter.org/>***

 

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