The Cost of Cold: Letter to i-Newspaper

Dear Editor,

Yesterday Sarah Cassidy reported on research carried out by Age UK into the health effects of cold homes. Nearly thirty thousand deaths a year due to poor housing and high energy bills in the UK. This is a disgrace.

It is also disappointing that the amazing Spread the Warmth campaign being fought by Age UK to rectify this situation seems to have garnered very little in the way of support from Green NGO's. Surely this is a clear climate change mitigation and health synergy where there should be cooperation? It is reported that £1.4bn is spent by the NHS each year dealing with cold related illnesses. By comparison the governments flagship home insulation scheme had a budget of just £1.1bn over three years from 2008 to 2011.

I sincerely hope that Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and others join this drive to improve housing standards. Energy bills would be cut, carbon targets would be that much closer to being met, and in the medium term related NHS expenditure would decrease. Surely even this coallition govornment could be convinced to go for a win-win-win policy?

Yours faithfully,
Calvin Jone

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The Cost of Cold

Today a respected UK charity released estimates of the death toll and the cost to the NHS of cold homes nationwide. These figures are included in The Cost of Cold (pdf).

It is a shocking state of affairs. The NHS is spending roughly £1.4bn per year treating conditions brought on my cold living conditions. Even after this expenditure  roughly twenty seven thousand people a year die from conditions brought on by the combination of shoddy housing stock and high energy prices.

While energy prices always hit the headlines, insulation and draftproofing are the less glamorous solutions that need more funding. For this reason Age UK has launched Spread the Warmth.

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Hurricane Sandy: The Climate Connections

Hurricane Sandy was the largest Atlantic storm ever recorded, it had a huge impact along much of the United States eastern seaboard. Partly due to it creating the lowest atmospheric pressure at its latitude ever recorded; this created a huge upswell of water.

Paraphrasing Bill Clintons famous 'Its The Economy Stupid' Bloomberg Buisiness Week lead with 'Its Global Warming Stupid'.

But what are the experts saying? Attributing a single event to climate change as BusinessWeek appear to is notoriously difficult to do but statements like 'we can expect a lot more of this in the future due to climate change' are more easily argued. In fact on the Scientific American website Mark Fischetti argues that climate change is already increading the number of large storms to be found across the Atlantic united states.


Columbia University's Earth Institute created a dedicated website with some highlights bellow: 

• The Science and the Lessons of Hurricane Sandy (link) 
• This is a wake-up call, don’t hit the snooze button (link) 
• Researcher Klaus Jacob anticipated these hazards years ago; in this video, he talks about how he was personally affected, and what needs to be done. (link)

Hurricane Sandy in the Scientific Press

• Centre for Climate and Energy Solutions: Factsheet on Hurricane Sandy and Climate Change (link) 
• Smithsonian Institute Online:  Did climate change cause hurricane sandy?
• *Top Pick* Scientific American: Special Hurricane Sandy Website.
• Science journal Nature has a "news explainer" on the issues. 

Background Reading:

• Media Coverage Review: Carbon Brief, a website analysing media coverage of climate change has produced a summary of the media narative around sandy.  
• Climate Science Review: Skeptical Science has a detailed overview of the climate science issues around hurricane sandy.   
• Climate Science of Extreme Events: Intergovornmental Pannel on Climate Change Report on Extreme Climate Events. (link) 

Related Podcast:

The Unexplained with Howard Huges, Edition 95: Hurricane Sandy Special. Featuring an interview with Katherine Hayhoe.

Related Video:

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Renwable Energy Foundation on Wind Power

The Renewable Energy Foundation  are regularly getting their distorted views on wind power published. Here is a letter that i had published in a local paper as a response.

Dear Editor,

On Monday you carried a story claiming wind farms will cost electricity bill payers £400 a year.  A lot of people are really struggling with energy prices, particularly in rural Aberdeenshire where mains gas isn't accessible. The story was based on work by the Renewable Energy Foundation (REF) and this should provide some relief.

The Renewable Energy Foundation (REF) was set up in 2005 by Noel Edmonds (yes that one!) and has been called a "anti-wind lobbying group" by the wind industries trade body. It is not an academic institution nor an impartial party.

So where does this number come from? This £400 number is what you get if you estimate the subsidy due to all of the UK's wind farm projects likely to be built in Scotland by 2020 and then allocate all of that cost to Scottish electricity bill payers. Even if Scotland becomes independent it is far from clear how the issue of subsidies would be resolved, not least because everyone will want to take credit for the carbon saving. All of the UK's nations have carbon targets.

REF clearly want people to be disgusted by the cost of wind. The only problem is that wind power produces low carbon electricity in a safe manner at a cost only marginally higher than fossil fuel sources. As the cost of fossil fuels goes up and the cost of wind power comes down London School of Economics (1) predicts that onshore wind will become cheaper that traditional forms of energy. Wind power has the potential to create large numbers of jobs in Scotland and despite what REF wants you to believe alternative forms of power may well become cheaper than traditional forms. If you don't like the look of wind turbines i cant argue with that but the economic case is far from as frightening as REF portray it.

Yours faithfully,
Calvin Jones

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Stop the Planting of Biofuels on Rainforests

The growth of biofuels is one of the leading causes of deforestation. This not only destroys the beauty and diversity contained by these rain forests but also causes the release of large quantities carbon into the atmosphere.

Please sign the petition by Avaaz and help to pressurise the government not to continue subsidising this process.

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Economics of Gas vs Wind Power

It is often argued that wind power has one main failing, namely that it isn't available all of the time.

Because of this, it is argued, all wind power has to have backup capacity sitting in the background.

Now, there is a good deal of truth to this. Wind power spread over a geographical areas the size of the UK is significantly correlated and either backup generation or access to the European electricity grid is required to cope with this variability.

Against this we need to set the reality that their are many GW of medium scale diesel generating units used by utilities right across the country. In the UK only a portion of these can be called upon to be used by the grid, in France--with it's greater portion of inflexible nuclear generation--these units are required to be grid connected.

More to the point, we still have many GW of coal power generation in use. Even as we speak 19GW of coal power is in use.  These unit's must surely but put out of regular use but retained for the highest energy demand cold periods. If they are used for 2 weeks per year the carbon input would be negligible but the security of supply provided would be valuable.

Finally, i find it fascinating just how cheap gas power stations are. Recently 2GW of generating capacity was built for only £1Bn. If the numbers in this recent news story are correct wind power projects cost about £6000 per peak kW installed compared to £500 per peak kW  in the aforementioned gas power plant. In reality the situation is even worse as on an average annual basis wind power only provides around 40% of its maximum power.

Usually this is taken to mean that wind power is uneconomic and gas is cheap. In fact what is actually show by these numbers is that the economics are decided by capital costs and running costs, respectively. Onshore wind is likely to be cheaper than gas in overall terms in just a few years.

A comparison with energy efficient LED's is illuminating (no pun intended). LED's cost perhaps £6 each compared to regular halogen light bulbs which might cost £50 each. However, if you use the LED's 9hrs a day throughout the year--such as in a restaurant or shop--the energy savings will more than repay your capital expenditure. After that year you will be reaping a dividend of long term energy savings. Now, the same type of economics are at play with with and gas.


Finally, the costs of buying a light bulb and an LED is pretty much the same as just buying the LED: £6 vs £6.50. The same is true for building wind or wind and gas plants. The advantages of using wind are to be had when the wind is blowing (over 80% of the time at the average site) and when wind isn't blowing the gas technology can be plugged back in. The increased capital cost for backup gas is negligible.

Further Reading:

• The Committee on Climate Change address Electricity Prices and Carbon Targets
• The Grantham Insitute for Climate Change @ LSE: Onshore Wind Economics

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New 2GW Gas Power Plant in Pembrokeshire

RWE Npower has just opened a new 2000MW CCGT Power Station in Pembrokshire (UK). I mentioned in a recent post that there is an ongoing consultation on a draft energy bill, their is also a great deal of controversy about the role that this bill will grant to gas power. This controversy is driven in significant part by the government's statutory climate change advisers the Committee on Climate Change who have highlighted the conflict between unabated gas and legally binding climate targets.

I was curious to find out the gC02/KWh figure for this new station as i was able to find plenty of claims about it's efficiency but no numbers! The tale just got curiouser and curiouser as i looked at their environmental impact assesment which states in section 5.3.5 that  the power station:

 "if operated at full capacity throughout the year, would emit approximately 5.8 million tones of co2".  

 Their are 8760 hours per year and the power plant produces 2000MW so at full capacity the power station would produce 17520GWh of electricity whilst emitting 5.8 million tones of co2. This works out at 302g/KWh.  This seems very good. However, in an Imperial College ICEPT Discussion Paper by Dr Robert Gross the following is to be found on p9:

"Currently the best achievable performance in a new CCGT would be around 56% efficient, implying around 360g/KWh, neglecting losses. Emissions as low as 300 g/KWh would require efficiency of 66%, well beyond what many believe to be the limits of current designs"

Some doubt is therefore cast upon this figure. The EIA doesn't provide a figure for the co2/kwh that this power plant is capable of. It does invite you to work this out yourself but if you do this and you interpret "operate at full capacity" to mean 24/7 operation you are apparently mislead. Some downtime may be assumed for maintenance but this is not stated.

Furthermore, the actual emissions per KWh will depend on the operating regime about which we are told nothing.

It is also notable that the gas used in LNG, imported at -140 degrees celsius and warmed up by aplication of sifnificant quantities of energy. This is dissapointing as some of this energy could have been used for district heating.

As a final thought, i find it interesting that the proposed Energy Performance Standard currently being considered is 450gC02/KWh. Considering the best technology might enable 300g/KWh: this is quite a gap.


Related Reading:

1. New gas power station accounced by Energy Minister Stephen Crabb.
2. Official power station website.
3. Environmental Impact Assesment (EIA) by Marine Management Systems.
4. ICEPT Discussion Paper on Gas and costs of wind power.

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Reshuffle paves the way for Aviation expansion.

UK Climate Policy is in a unique situation in that the overall aim: emissions reductions of 80% by 2050 is already written into law. During times of economic difficulty when Growth is THE issue it is significant that policy out of political fasihion is given some support by a legally binding emissions reduction law.

Exactly how much the support UK Climate Change Act provides environmentalists with is about to be tested. Cabinet has just be reshuffled and Justine Greening the Transport Secretary with an anti-heathrow expansion position is on here way out while and old coal miner from the north of england is on his way in.


There is a lot of history in the battle over aviation and climate change (past blog coverage here). And it looks likely that this fight is back on. I wonder how much of this battle is going to be over planning concerns and how much is going to come down to the inherent incompatibility between airport expansion and the govornments legally binding emissions targets.

1. Can The UK Fly More Without Breaking Climate Change Targets? (Guardian 6th Sep 2012)
2. Boris Johnson's Heathrow warning after Justine Greening's move (BBC, 4th Sep 2012)

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All Time Low for Arctic Sea Ice

Arctic sea ice has just hit an all time low according to the National Snow and Ice Data Centre (NSIDC).

It's the sort of thing that should be a warning sign but as i write this the US republican party are meeting and honing their climate skeptic message. Obama and the democrats are opening up the arctic to exploration for oil. So matters dont look perticuarly good for a rapid political response.

In the UK Campaign Against Climate Change are planning a demo at Downing Street to highlight this 'red flag' to humanity. The demo starts at 1pm (details here).

Further Reading:

• Carbon Brief goes into the details on sea ice decline.
• BBC Article
• Guardian Article 
• NSIDC on Twitter

Other Comments:

• It seems to me that record lows in sea ice should be a huge story as they represent huge changes in the global climate which we rely on. Unfortunately it isn't a terribly glamourous story. I do appreciate groups who are doing their best to raise the profile of key climate change markers like this. This is why i have just donated to campaign against climate change and why i hope you will do the same.

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Another energy bill? The battle is under way.

It seems like only yesterday that the 2011 energy act was established. Well, it wasn't long ago was it. But they are at it again!

New government new energy policy. The Department of Energy and Climate Change have an overview of the work done so far on a new energy bill, it's all being 'worked up' at the moment and thus parliament isnt yet involved although the same cant be said about politics.

The BBC are already reporting on a battle between DECC and their advisers at the Committee on Climate Change and the Treasury. 38 Degrees has already got a campaign going to prevent what they are calling a 'second dash for gas'. The Carbon Brief has done some good work looking into exactly what is going on at DECC in terms of policy on gas power policy.

The Primary Documents:

• The Draft Bill
• The Parliamentary Briefing
• The Energy and Climate Change Committee (HoP) response
• Informal Working Group response (HoL)

Some Summaries for those short on time:

• The Carbon Brief on The Energy Cold War Turning Hot
• The Carbon Brief summary of the Energy and Climate Change Committees' rather lengthy response.
• Guardian Eco-Audit of Draft Bill (with lots of interesting NGO responses).
• WWF Scotland response to the Draft Bill

Further Background:

•  Green Party MP,  Caroline Lucas responds.to the Energy and Climate Change Committee
• Generators and Industry respond to the Energy and Climate Change Committee
• Jim Watson of Sussex energy group contributes to this report by IPPR.
• Dieter Helm of Oxford University has written about the energy bill.

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