We are excited to announce that CAT has been chosen as one of the hosts of this year’s BBC Autumnwatch. Iolo Williams will join us for two weeks to bring the best of Mid Wales wildlife to living rooms right across the UK.
Category: Climate Change
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CAT Stories: Zero carbon councils – Interview with Town Councillor David Royle
David Royle has been a Sawbridgeworth Town Councillor since 2015. Before that, he worked in publishing and as an education consultant. We caught up with David after the May Zero Carbon Britain course, to talk about the work his council does in getting to zero carbon, and how the course will inform their work.
CAT’s Zero Carbon Britain courses see people join across all sectors of society, from school teachers to members of climate action groups to local councillors, to gain the knowledge and skills needed to help implement and inspire changes in their community.
What inspired you to join the Zero Carbon Britain: live online course?
Our County Council passed a Climate Emergency Motion last July; the District Council refused to call it an emergency on semantic grounds; both are yet to produce the promised action plans. I wanted to learn more about climate change, share concerns with others and access resources, best practice and links to follow up/adapt.
What are the key things you took home from the course?
I found Paul Allen’s Zero Carbon Britain introduction very helpful and clear in explaining how we have got into the present mess. The first time I have fully understood the background.
Rob Hopkins‘ talk was eye-opening and inspiring and Green Wedmore showed what might be possible in a small town like ours, with a bit of imagination and commitment.
How will what you learnt during the course inform the work of your council?
I have shared a summary and links with fellow councillors and members of the local groups, plus District Councillors and officers involved in implementing the climate action plan and arranging local sustainability forum meetings.
All councillors should see the Zero Carbon Britain presentation. I hope I can use what I learned to inform local action planning within the groups I belong to, as well as at council level. We have already funded a cycling and walking study, some of the recommendations from which we hope to fund and implement, following the government’s ‘green restart’ message and funding, but also linked to the three new developments in our town.
What are your plans/plans of your council?
As a councillor my particular concerns are:
- The impact of new housing developments on our town and the lack of commitment by the planning authority to ensuring that we get sustainable and energy-efficient new houses, despite the advice of the Committee on Climate Change.
- The lack of clearly explained recycling opportunities for residents, community groups businesses and local schools, including food waste.
Our town council passed a climate change motion and organised an eco-audit by 3 Acorns (Donnachadh McCarthy, who published books on a greener lifestyle 16 years ago), which we are in the process of implementing/extending to the town.
Want to learn more?
The latest Zero Carbon Britain report is free to download, with plenty of resources on developing community action plans and zero carbon models.
Our next Zero Carbon Britain: live online course takes place 23-24 September 2020.
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CAT Stories – Zero carbon councils: interview with Sarah Speakman-Jones
We recently caught up with Sarah after the May Zero Carbon Britain course, to talk about the work she and her council do in getting to zero carbon, and how our Zero Carbon Britain course will inform their work. (more…)
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Energy saving retrofits
To address the climate crisis we need to rapidly reduce energy use, and refurbishing homes to high energy standards is one of the key measures that can help. CAT Information Officer Joel Rawson looks at some different approaches to transforming UK housing.
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A tribute to Sir John Houghton, 1931-2020
World renowned climate scientist Sir John Houghton has died at the age of 88.
Sir John was a great friend of CAT and many other environmental organisations, and helped raise public understanding of both the impacts of climate change and the need for urgent action on solutions.
An illustrious career as one of the world’s most eminent climate scientists included serving as Co-Chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Scientific Assessment Working Group from 1988 to 2002. In 2007, he received the Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the IPCC, an award shared with Al Gore.
A former Director General and later Chief Executive of the Met Office, Sir John founded the world renowned Hadley Centre for Climate Science and Services. As one of the foremost climate scientists of his generation, he contributed greatly to the understanding of the causes and impacts of global temperature rise.
In 2007, Sir John – who grew up in Rhyl, Denbighshire – moved to Mid Wales, becoming a near neighbour and valued adviser to CAT.
Paul Allen, CAT’s Zero Carbon Britain research coordinator said:
“Sir John Houghton was a great inspiration for CAT’s Zero Carbon Britain research, and a good friend. Years before net-zero carbon became a goal of governments around the world, Sir John encouraged us to explore solutions rooted in what the physics of the climate science demands, rather than what is judged to be politically palatable.
“We worked with him at several UN climate summits, and in 2016 he made a generous donation to CAT that allowed us to create the annual Sir John Houghton Bursary for our postgraduate students, helping support the next generation in exploring climate solutions. We will miss his wisdom, deeply held beliefs and foresight.”
The Sir John Houghton Bursary is awarded annually to a promising student who demonstrates that they have an excellent academic record and a passion for tackling climate change.
On making the donation, Sir John said:
“I have spent a lifetime studying the atmosphere and the climate and latterly have been concerned with the reality of human induced climate change. I now want to help the next generation tackle this serious problem, possibly the biggest the world faces.”
Thank you, John, for everything that you did to help build a better world, and for your friendship and support over many years.
Our deepest condolences to all of Sir John’s friends and family.
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Green Party MP Caroline Lucas discusses zero carbon solutions at CAT
Caroline Lucas MP visited CAT this week to discuss climate solutions and find out more about our research into how the UK can reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions.
On the visit, the Green Party MP met with the team from CAT’s new Zero Carbon Britain Hub to discuss ways that we can reduce energy use, switch to 100% renewables, and transform land use.
Speaking during the visit, Ms Lucas said:
“One of the most inspiring things about Zero Carbon Britain is the way everything it proposes is perfectly possible right now. It doesn’t rely on technologies we haven’t yet even thought of and haven’t developed, that we don’t have at scale.
“What Zero Carbon Britain does is to look at what we know now, and how we can use what we know, to ensure that we do reach that zero carbon target as soon as possible, and I think that the detail and the analysis that CAT brings to that job is second to none.”
CAT’s latest report Zero Carbon Britain: Rising to the Climate Emergency outlines a scenario in which the UK has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions to net zero, a target that is now enshrined in UK law.
CAT’s research shows how this could be done using existing technology, without relying on unproven carbon capture systems. The changes needed can bring many additional benefits, including improved public health, enhanced wellbeing, and a reduction in fuel poverty.
Paul Allen shares findings from CAT’s latest report, Zero Carbon Britain: Rising to the Climate Emergency The new Zero Carbon Britain Hub and Innovation Lab at CAT will help communities, local authorities and policymakers to create Zero Carbon Action Plans, and to provide support for the development of innovative solutions.
CAT Head of Development Eileen Kinsman said:
“This year CAT is greatly expanding our work with policymakers and local authorities, and our new Zero Carbon Britain Hub will be working with politicians from all the main parties to help them to build zero carbon action plans at local, regional and national levels.
“We welcomed the opportunity to share our work with Caroline Lucas MP, and to discuss the policies that could help the UK to tackle the climate emergency.”
Caroline Lucas and colleagues with CAT’s Zero Carbon Britain team Find out more about CAT’s Zero Carbon Britain research.
Keep in touch by signing up to our enewsletter or becoming a member.
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Time for wicked solutions
Paul Allen discusses CAT’s new report, and explores how we can meet the complex challenges of climate change with ingenuity and collective determination.
There is no time to spare. In order to deliver the necessary solutions at the scale and speed required, we must fully understand the true nature of the climate problem.
Back in 1973, design theorists Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber developed the term ‘wicked problem’ to help us recognise really complex, challenging problems, particularly those with many feedbacks and no single solution.
The Centre for Alternative Technology acknowledges the climate emergency as a wicked problem, and is launching a major programme of increasing action to help society develop the wicked solutions it so urgently demands – the first phase of which was the release of our latest report Zero Carbon Britain: Rising to the Climate Emergency.
Feedback loops and climate breakdown
The first reason to see climate change as a wicked problem is that it contains many feedbacks that make it non-linear. As the Earth’s climate systems break down, the resulting changes feed back on each other and accelerate change. For example, loss of sea ice means the earth absorbs more of the sun’s heat and warms faster, which causes more ice to melt. There are many others.
In addition, the root causes of climate breakdown are deeply intertwined, spanning many disciplines. All across our living systems, humanity has become locked into high carbon ways of doing things; these exert a powerful influence, shaping the choices that define our lives. Despite the serious climate impacts being known, and despite the existence of cost-effective alternatives, the self-perpetuating inertia of high carbon energy, housing, transport, agriculture and economics creates persistent systemic forces that are highly resistant to change.
The reason we now face an ‘emergency’ is that, despite the climate problem being recognised by science for decades, governments and industries have not acted fast enough. A systemic bias against low carbon technologies and practices is a result of the historical development of the fossil fuel system. We could have – and should have – accelerated this shift to net zero carbon decades ago, avoiding many mistaken investments in fossil fuel assets that we simply cannot burn.
Accelerating emergency
We have, at last, collectively acknowledged that the science tells us we must go to net zero.
The UK government has now signed into law a new target to ‘cut greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2050’. This was approved by both the Commons and Lords in June 2019, strengthening the target of the 2008 Climate Change Act. But many believe that for a long-industrialised country like the UK, net zero by 2050 is simply not fast enough.
Speaking to the BBC in September, former Chief Scientific Adviser to the government Professor Sir David King said he’s been scared by the number of extreme events, and called for the UK to advance its climate targets by 10 years. “It’s appropriate to be scared. We predicted temperatures would rise, but we didn’t foresee these sorts of extreme events we’re getting so soon.”
Finding solutions
Thankfully, our human response embodies some ‘wicked solutions’ that can also accelerate change.
For over 12 years, CAT’s Zero Carbon Britain project has been demonstrating with increasing detail how we can connect up the currently available, well-proven technologies to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions.
What makes these zero carbon technology solutions wicked is, firstly, the fact they are also non-linear and are now revealing an emerging array of feedbacks, which accelerate both the scale and speed of their deployment.
Investment in research means production costs fall and the scale of deployment increases; this triggers further research and investments in manufacturing and costs fall even faster.
For example, the falls in the cost of solar panels (solar photovoltaic or solar PV) has been faster than experts predicted. Massachusetts Institute of Technology have identified research and development and improvements in cell efficiency as the major factors contributing to a 99 percent reduction in module costs since 1980.
Offshore wind has plummeted below the cost of fossil fuels in just over half a decade. In September, The Guardian revealed that as recently as 2015 UK offshore windfarms received contracts costing around £120/MWh, by 2019 this had fallen to around £40/MWh – less than the price of electricity in the wholesale market.
When the shift to these new technologies is also combined with a ‘just transition’ that offers a more socially just and equitable deal for workers, energy customers or citizens, the process begins to engage more and more people. That is the point of wicked systems thinking – not just looking at one feedback loop, but many.
Grassroots leadership
Fortunately, yet another important wicked solution feedback is now emerging across many countries: new grassroots leadership is calling for climate emergency declarations, backed by action plans for town, city, regional and national levels.
This is now accelerating, as one town sees its neighbour declare, it then also joins the call. We are now witnessing a seismic shift in the collective action to prevent climate breakdown, it is becoming the new normal. And this shift is being documented: UK declarations are listed on the website climateemergency.uk and global declarations can be found on cedamia.org.
Schoolchildren have gone on strike; many deeply committed people across the country have taken to the streets; even the UK parliament has declared a climate emergency. And there is more in the pipeline, so much so that this is now transforming national, political and cultural narratives in a deep way.
CAT staff, students and visitors show their support for the Climate Strike. Multiplying the benefits
But perhaps the most powerful element of this ‘wicked solution’ is that delivering a zero carbon future also holds the potential to be one of the most exciting opportunities in human history, offering us the chance to simultaneously resolve many other problems.
Acting on climate breakdown with a multi-solving, interdisciplinary mindset can help us also deliver benefits across many sectors. The trick is to identify synergies between investments in the changes needed to reach net zero and investments to improve health and wellbeing, enhance biodiversity, create jobs, reduce poverty, stabilise our economy, and increase our resilience and ability to adapt to climate change.
Maximising the benefits beyond carbon can help empower diverse constituencies, building the necessary engagement and a coalition of support across society.
Inspiring action
CAT is now exploring key collaborations and scaling up its ability to provide people with the knowledge, skills and resources needed to take action at the speed and scale required.
We hope this new 2019 report will support the emerging ‘climate emergency response team’ of active citizens and local groups who are working hard to bring to life the wicked net zero solutions needed. And, in the process, help us foster a stronger, more resilient society, united in a new sense of collective purpose!
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Powering up the UK’s offshore wind industry
Offshore wind has a crucial part to play in getting to net zero greenhouse gas emissions. Sally Shenton explores the promise and practicalities of a growing industry, and looks at what needs to be done to unlock its huge potential.
The first two offshore turbines were installed off the coast at Blyth in 2000. Over the 19 years since, a new industry has developed, with turbines increasing in size and power output, plus a revolution in the ways they are operated.
The first commercial offshore turbines installed at Scroby Sands and North Hoyle were 2 MegaWatt (MW) machines based on onshore models with additional marinisation to protect them against salt water and the harsher environment. The latest turbines being planned for offshore sites are between 10 and 12 MW.
Financial support and falling costs
In the early days of the offshore wind industry, the cost of building and operating offshore wind farms was high. However, through a planned programme of financial support and a great deal of innovation and enthusiasm, offshore wind is now lower in cost than most other forms of energy.
Financial support initially took the form of the Non-Fossil Fuel Obligation, which was used to part-fund the original Blyth turbines. This was soon followed by the Renewable Obligation (RO), which required electricity suppliers to include renewables in their mix, with the RO Certificate (or ROC) acting as evidence that suppliers met their renewable generation targets (the ‘obligation’). Offshore wind generators could sell ROCs to electricity supply companies to provide income in addition to the revenue received for the power they produced.
More recently, the RO regime has been replaced by a competitive auction to win ‘Contracts for Difference’ (CFD), which provide a way for power prices to be guaranteed in the long-term. Offshore wind developers can use the certainty of the CFD to borrow large amounts of money – often several billion pounds – which is needed to build an offshore wind farm.
This competitive approach coupled with larger turbines and growing experience has delivered the dramatic cost savings seen over the last few years: the cost of energy produced peaked around £150/MWh while in the next auction they are expected to be below £52/MWhr.
Developing technology
The importance of offshore wind in the future energy mix has been recognised by many, including governments and climate change activists, and it has been a real privilege to see the industry develop.
The world of offshore wind is full of amazing things. We have built electricity substations in the middle of the sea, used some of the largest crane ships in the world, we have created special boats to allow maintenance workers to safely transfer onto turbines and, for larger sites further from shore, we now use specially designed ships that allow technicians to live on-board for several weeks.
Once planning consent and finance is in place, offshore wind can be built quickly and used at scale. The UK is currently home to the world’s largest offshore wind farm at the Walney wind farm site off the coast of Cumbria. Yet this record is set to be beaten soon by another UK site, the Hornsea 1 construction, which is due to be finished in 2020; at 1.2GW its output is comparable to the large thermal power plants it will inevitably replace.
Rising to the Climate Emergency
Being in this industry at this time is exciting and it’s easy to get swept along in the wave of enthusiasm. We must celebrate our successes, but we should also remember the bigger picture. We are in a climate emergency and we need to move over to using zero carbon forms of energy production as soon as possible.
The current ‘Industrial Strategy’ – the deal done with the UK government – is aiming to bring a total of 30 GW into operation by 2030, which is one quarter of the capacity needed under CAT’s Zero Carbon Britain plan. So why are we not accelerating the number of wind turbines installed offshore? Despite installing nearly 3,000 offshore turbines, why are none manufactured in the UK? Why aren’t all communities close to offshore wind farm installations prospering? Why is the installation rate of offshore wind turbines falling? And why did the government introduce a cap on the amount of offshore wind that can be developed in the 2019 CFD auction no matter how cheap it is?
We are facing a Climate Emergency. Renewable energy offers a solution that is proven, quick to build and low cost compared with other new power plants. The Zero Carbon Britain energy model estimates that we will need to install around 9,000 more turbines around the coast of the UK. We will only do this quickly if we have a stable pipeline of projects with some form of income guarantee in place to ensure we can raise the finance needed – whether this is from banks, pension funds, local authorities or direct funding from government.
It is not easy to criticise the industry I love to be a part of, especially when I know how many individual engineers, offshore workers, designers, environmental specialists, planners, vessel skippers and many others have worked so hard to bring us to where we are today. It has not been an easy ride to get to this point – early offshore wind workers were ridiculed for moving out of the fossil fuel sector, worked long hours and kept going through periods where the industry faltered and struggled. We owe it to all these people and to the youth to accelerate our plans.
Speeding the transition to zero carbon
If we install at the fastest rate achieved in any year, it will take 24 years to install the 9,000 turbines needed in the Zero Carbon Britain model. If we go at twice this rate, then we could do it in 12 years – but it is not quite that simple.
We need to ensure the planning and development of projects keeps pace – it currently takes around 10 years to find sites, gain planning permission, then plan and build projects; the actual physical installation of the turbines, offshore substations and cables takes only 2-3 years of this.
We will also be building in increasingly challenging areas – challenging due to water depth, weather conditions, wildlife or visual impact. We need to make sure we place turbines in the right places, but we must make these decisions quickly and ensure that the pipeline of projects is secure so that we can give manufacturers the confidence to build factories in the UK. We need to improve our understanding of the impacts on wildlife – especially birds – and seek ways to protect populations as we build and install more turbines.
We also need to urgently accelerate the commercialisation of floating wind technology – an area in which the UK is currently a leader – so that we can build in deeper water that is further offshore. And we need to make sure improvements to the electricity grid do not hold us up.
There is a huge role for government to support the enabling work that underpins the growth of a new clean energy sector. There is more work to do to improve understanding of the underlying natural environment and set the right signals for investment in a new electricity grid infrastructure. We need to recruit and train more environmental and consenting experts if we are to avoid delays in bringing projects forward. We need to invest in our ports and manufacturing facilities to deliver jobs as well as turbines.
Challenges surround us, but I am filled with hope that these kinds of conversations are now happening and we gaining so much support from around the UK and the world. Take heart from the words of Mahatma Gandhi: “The difference between what we are doing and what we are capable of doing would solve most of the world’s problems.”
About the author
Sally is Director of Generating Better Limited. She has worked in the offshore wind industry for over 12 years and has been in the electricity supply industry for her entire career. She now runs a consultancy that advises offshore wind investors, owners and operators, whilst supporting suppliers, industry bodies and universities.
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Energy updates – modelling Zero Carbon Britain
The new Zero Carbon Britain report includes an updated energy scenario that takes into account changes in technology and progress in renewables as well as refinements to the hourly modelling that underpins the research. Philip James explains the key updates.
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Gearing up to support community level change
How can Zero Carbon Britain help with on-the-ground action? Hazel Graham introduces a pioneering project that’s having real impact at a local level and providing a template for others to follow.