Towards A Brighter Tomorrowland

Dear my lovely readers, I want to take this moment to thank you for reading (and hopefully enjoying!) my Blog.

This will be my last post for a while, I hope you've found my entries interesting and that they've taught you that we are all responsible for the environmental and climate change around us, and more importantly that we DO have the power to make a change and contribute to their mitigation.

I will leave you with this inspirational speech from the Disney's (2015) Tomorrowland, in the hope it encourages you reflect on the issues we have discussed throughout my Blog and motivates you to stand up and fight for a brighter future.

So, will you "gobble" up the impending environmental and social catastrophe "like a chocolate eclair"?

Or will you help turn the possibility of a better future into a reality?

Just because the "future doesn't ask anything of you today", doesn't mean we should sit back and await its arrival. 

It's the Simple Things: Household Climate Adaptation in the UK

“Household energy consumption is a motor of substantial production of greenhouse gas emissions and thus a central arena of climate mitigation policies”

~ Schaffrin & Reibling (2015)

Figure 1) Steps to achieving a low-carbon household

Continuing my analysis of the UK, a fundamental issue with the domestic climate mitigation lies in the divergent household incomes – dictating ‘disparity in energy use’ and ability to change ‘household energy practices’ (Schaffrin & Reibling, 2015).

Under the UKs ‘liberal welfare regime’, low-income households ‘devote a higher share of their income’ despite significantly LESS energy consumption, placing them at high risk of ‘energy poverty’ (Schaffrin & Reibling, 2015)!

For a developed country, this situation seems very backwards to me and poses the question: How are we meant to achieve low-carbon households amongst inequality?

Perry et al (2008) present the interesting idea of a Locally Integrated Energy Sector (LIES). Used to reduce local carbon footprints and tackle CO₂ production and energy waste, LIES works by integrating local renewable energy sources i.e. ‘wind, solar cells, heat pumps’ etc, with ‘excess heat and power available from local industry’, transferring heat ‘from one process to another via a carrying medium’ i.e. steam.

To me, this sounds like a practical method which reduces CO₂ emissions and increases energy efficiency in both domestic and industrial settings.

However, various obstacles stopping the adoption of LCZ (low- & zero-carbon) technologies and ‘energy efficiency measures’ in households remain (Caird et al., 2014):

• Loft insulation: ‘loss of storage or space’
• Energy-efficient lighting: poor ‘colour quality, brightness, warm-up time’
• Upgrading and installation barriers for renters and low-income households
• ‘high up-front costs’
• ‘lack of information’
• ‘hassle and disruption'

And, as if by magic, the argument FOR financial incentives and financial penalties on ‘inefficient technologies’ - suggesting their ‘phasing out and prohibition’ - is reborn (Caird et al., 2014). Perry et al (2008) also argue that government policies should be aimed at the ‘high-consuming group’, as opposed to standardising across high- and low-income households. I also think that the energy efficiency of older properties should be prioritized, reintroducing the government grant due to the extra expense.

But, what happened to cycling, walking, using public transport and car sharing?!

We should focus less on encouraging the installation of LCZ technologies and more on the simple, low-cost and low-effort ‘energy saving actions’ which EVERYONE can do to reduce household consumption (Attari et al., 2011).

• Turn your heating down & wear an extra jumper
• Reduce the washing machine’s temperature settings
• Close doors and curtains to keep heat in

After all, household adaptations are ‘in practice voluntary undertakings’, so surely it makes sense to start small (Dannevig et al., 2012)?

Feeling the Heat: UK's Solar Panel Subsidy Cuts

Firstly I’d like to wish all my readers a HAPPY NEW YEAR, and apologise for the not so cheery blog post you’re about to read.

You may have noticed that the news was dominated by reports over government subsidy cuts to households installing solar panels - ‘just days after agreeing to move swiftly to a low-carbon energy future’ at COP21 (Macalister, 2015).

Is this a step backwards in the UKs transition to a green future?

Does it undermine the efforts made in the domestic arena to tackle climate change?

“These cuts are snatching defeat from the jaws of victory”

                                                                                    ~ Carrington (2015)

Financial incentives have ‘encouraged the installation of solar panels’ in the past and are crucial to fostering ‘environmental citizenship’ (Brignall, 2015; Upham, 2012). Subsidies including the ‘feed-in tariff’ (Fit) have been labelled by Greenpeace UK as ‘vital’ to facilitating household contribution to the renewable industry and a low-carbon UK (Casson, 2015).

So, their removal is certainly questionable, and will alter future household investment in renewable energy and perhaps the survival of the UK’s renewable industry itself! – not the best start to 2016!

Table 1) % of respondents citing obstacles to installing renewable technology 

- please observe PV and Solar Panels (Upham, 2012)

Stating that ‘policy reaches into everyday lives and private spaces’, Bulkeley’s (2015) paper highlights the challenge of both ‘unlocking carbon’ and ‘locking in new and renewable forms of energy’, rendering the subsidy cuts as even more puzzling!

What’s worse, fossil fuel subsidies have NOT been cut, providing no means of incentivizing people to curb fossil fuel consumption (Coca, 2015)! Confused? Me too!

“When the cost of technologies come down, so should the consumer-funded support.”

                                                                        ~ Amber Rudd

 (Secretary of the Department of Energy & Climate Change)

However, when talking to Paul Wilson from Baxi SenerTec (04/01/2015), I realised it’s not quite so black and white. There are genuine issues with Solar Panels in the UK and reasons for government cuts.

Issues:

• Weather is ‘not conductive’ to generating continuous heat & electricity
• Electrical grids ‘cannot cope’ with the power sent back to them, causing “dumping”

Cut Justification:

• Not considered a ‘viable renewable energy source for the UK market’
• Payback schemes give ‘companies, not individuals, the opportunity to profit from renewable energies’
• Solar PV seen as a profitable market as opposed to ‘something that helps the planet’
• The UK is the only country that offers government payback for using renewable energy sources

Paul also explained how the UK is ‘on track to achieve the CO₂ reductions set by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol’, and that in comparison to global leaders in CO₂ production, we’re ‘well down the list’ – a refreshingly positive outlook of the UK’s energy mix.

Table 2) Territorial MtCO₂ - UK ranking 15th in 2014 (Global Carbon Atlas, 2014)

So, what’s next for household contribution? Without solar panels how can we help?

This is certainly a domestic dilemma which requires attention.