Tag: UK

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Back at the beginning of August the Prime Minister’s spokesman said UK net zero emission goal is to far away, have they done anything about it?

Allegra Stratton is the spokesperson for the British Prime Minister’s office, number 10 Downing Street. She stated that the UK target of zero emissions by 2050 was too far away. She stated that the science is clear and we need to be making changes now.

It is true that we have intermediate targets. We aim to reduce carbon emissions by 68% by 2030 and by 78% by 2035.

Continue reading “Back at the beginning of August the Prime Minister’s spokesman said UK net zero emission goal is to far away, have they done anything about it?”
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What should we do when our government makes a big show of new climate commitments which are actually recycled?

The British government is continually making good noises about cutting emissions.

At the beginning of June they announced half a billion pounds for a blue planet fund – but this was merely repurposed money, from the conservative manifesto in 2019. A total of £11.6 billion has been pledged to fight climate change by the British government in this term, which means that this pledge is nothing more than deciding where to spend the money.

Is £11.6 billion spent across a parliamentary term a good amount of money. 

It is certainly a lot of money, however in 2020 the government spend over 900 billion pounds, meaning that this advertisement is roughly 0.2% of our spending each year for the next 5 years. This is not fighting for our lives and that of our children’s future. Indeed if we truly consider environmental change an existential threat to our current way of life if this is chump change.

The fact that new pledges the government make then come out.of this small amount should be an embarrassment. I suspect that it will be highlighted multiple times during the the climate conference being held later this year. I hope other countries point out the absurdity of this position.

We are an island country! We stand to have our country changed dramatically if the amount of sea level rise that is possible actually happens. The idea that we can’t even put 1% of our GDP towards fighting this is a problem and one which future generations would have a right to point to.

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Why are so many African countries on the government’s Covid red list

Out of the 54 countries in Africa 20 currently listed on the British government’s red list. This list is a list of countries that you cannot travel to without then spending 10 days in quarantine.

All well and good you might say, after all the government’s main concern is the health of its citizens. The problem is that this does not seem to be about the health of the UK citizens. Instead it seems more aimed at protecting against people’s misconceptions.

France is on the British amber covid list, yet this country alone has 115,000 death registered, or roughly two-thirds of the number of deaths recorded in the whole of Africa (between 150,000 and 200,000 depending which statistics are used. Indeed Germany is on the government’s green list and yet has had 90000 deaths and is currently running at 10,000 new cases a day. What is more given that these numbers are broken down by country, more than 80,000 deaths occurred in South Africa, even the rest of the African continent a share only about 100000 deaths.

The whole of Africa (a contingent of 1.3 billion people) only recorded roughly twice the number of daily cases recently to Germany – a country on the green list. 

Now, it could be argued, these countries are only on the red list because the government cannot be sure of the data coming in. 

Why is this a problem? Well, apart from the astounding level of institutional racism that this seems to show, tourism is essential for many African economies. As a result this failure to follow the science to have long lasting socio economic problems.

The problem is that China has been claiming virtually no cases for months. China is currently on the amber list, yet  there is a little faith or put in the numbers they are quoting. It’s true that with some of the African countries, there is also a little faith in the numbers.

Why is this of concern to a wildlife travel and conservation website? It is simple! The longer these countries stay on the red list because of covid, the bigger an impact this will have on wilderness reserves and national parks. If only a few people are willing to enter the country and tolerate the quarantine on return, we run the risk that these countries will turn to hunting instead of photographic safari.

Time will tell if this is a racist move, allowing the government to appear to be taking covid seriously – without too much worry of backlash from the country in question.

Obviously the sooner these rules change (for me as well as the tourism sector in Africa) the better, however this is the same for the natural world. I just hope and pray that the government has better reasons than it appears for its current covid red list, and will open up travel to these relatively safe countries soon enough to save the wild places that they protect.

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Personal update on cutting carbon emissions – the failure of the green house grant

I wrote a while ago about ways that my household was trying to cut emissions. There are lots of things that we are changing to the way that we live, however there were a couple of ways that we intended to reduce emissions from our house.

The UK had a scheme called the green housing grant – with the intention of helping people green their houses. This only ran for a short period of time, and did not use anywhere near the relatively small pot of money that the government had set aside. Initially, the scheme was given £1.5 billion, to be given out in amounts of £5000, or £10,000 for specific groups.

We applied for thermal solar and additional external insulation – as we live in a concrete conclad house, which is well known for more insulation. Unfortunately, though the person who came to look at our house suggested that they could both be done for 10k – this proved to be rubbish. The best quote we got for thermal solar (this is a system that pumps liquid through tubes on your roof and then transfers the heat to your water, for both hot water and heating your home, greatly reducing the amount of gas or electricity you would have to use) was about £8500. This was felt to be unduly high by the green housing grants, so needed explanation so we had to appeal, our reasoning was accepted. The problem is, that by the end of this process, the people who had agreed to install the thermal solar are fully booked for the length of the installation period allowed by the government and there is no way to extend.

This was frankly a complete waste of time.

What is more annoying, is that we bought photovoltaic solar that was supposed to be installed at the same time to reduce cost. So what have we done?

Well, our 2.8kw of solar panels are standing in the garden, and as we have to pay for installation we thought that we should look at how much we could get the thermal solar equipment for.

My go-to on many things like this, is to look at ebay or similar second hand sites. I realize that many people would calculate that the equipment may not last long enough to make this worth the savings, but on the other hand, if we can get things used there are two advantages. Firstly, the item comes essentially carbon neutral: it does not increase the manufacturing carbon footprint to reuse it. Secondly, it should save money.

In our case, we paid roughly £600 for our solar panels. Brand new, the general rule of thumb is £2000 per kwh so , these panels are only slightly over 10% of standard price

For our thermal solar system we have paid 300, and for that we get the panel (this collects the heat) a pump, and an incredibly well insulated tank (this is necessary so that the hot water stays hot until you need the hot water). The general thought is that thermal solar systems cost between £3000 and £6000 to buy. Our green housing grant included installation, but even so, would suggest an expensive install

Installation, is something that we are still looking at, but should not cost more than a few thousand.

So what savings can we look forwards to? Well, a thermal solar system should save us roughly 2/3 of our gas bill (though some suggest it could be as high as 4/5. Our electricity supplier octopus, has a one in one out tariff, which means that our electricity use should drop in price dramatically (potentially coming close to a net zero charge. This would suggest, that our financial savings are likely to approach £1000 a year. Furthermore, while we are on a zero carbon electricity tariff, as we will be supplying about enough for ourselves, this will free up enough carbon free electricity to eliminate perhaps a tonne of carbon emissions. Our thermal solar will also eliminate roughly a tonne a year.

In short, the the financial payback period will likely only be a few years. As we are using second hand thermal and photovoltaic panels, we will be saving emissions from day one, and are likely to save a couple of tonnes a year, or perhaps as much as 40-50 tonnes of carbon dioxide over the lifespan of the panels.

There is still much to do, including greatly increasing the insulation on the house, and buying an electric car. However, cutting roughly 10% off our family emissions is a useful activity.

If all the readers of this site carried out these measure, net carbon reductions could amount to as much as 10 kilotons. There are many things that humans need to do, in order to cut our carbon emissions rapidly over the next decade or so. There are, however, few that can save so much money or be done so quickly.

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Do over 50s want climate change addressed even if it costs more? Err, yes!

There have been a great deal of things that have happened over the last decade or two, which would suggest that the older generation don’t care what happens to the climate because they won’t be here to tolerate the effects.

Older generations also have a significant reputation for intransigence: adoption of new technology often spreads to the older people last. The problem with global warming is that the speed required to adjust is way too high to allow more senior members of society to wait.

This is why I found the results of a recent survey so encouraging. The survey wasn’t huge, only looking at 500 people, however it found more than two-thirds of respondents want ministers in our government to move faster even if it pushes up prices for services.

The survey found that these people were highly likely to be making adjustments to mitigate future climate change. These ranged from traveling less, to changing their diet and using less energy at home.

This is in some ways particularly encouraging, as the majority of home greening efforts take a significant length of time to pay off 

If you are already advanced in age the benefit felt is unlikely to be by you.

Now of course for most elderly parents or grandparents, they are greatly interested in passing down their housing stock to their descendants – so any greening of the house can last longer. Nevertheless, for older people reducing the future carbon emissions of their house is less about their own financial interests – indeed the government should bear this in mind.

The other issue is that the majority of these people live in particularly large and expensive houses. These are often the houses that young people aspire to live in if they ever make it. Due to their size and age, many of these properties will cost several tens of thousands of pounds to upgrade and as such the current inhabitants must be thinking about their descendants if they’re willing to upgrade their house for the future fight on climate change.

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British Banks have funded more than 800 million tonnes of carbon production a year

Alarmingly this quantity is twice the amount that the UK emitted in the same year, indeed British banking would be the 9th highest emitter in the world.

In this day and age it is not good enough to merely be environmentally conscious yourself. Many of these products would not been able to take place without funding from the UK.

These banks must change their policies. For one it is severely damaging the worlds, however even if the banks are not interested in whether they are damaging the world, these Investments are clearly poor, as they will have to stop being used long before they make their money back.

The British public must take action. If banks and companies that are investing in in industries that are emitting large quantities of carbon, they are destroying our future. We must take action by defending them completely so that they either change their behaviour or go out of business.

I encourage you, to look into your banks behaviour, and move your money if they are not acting in the planets best interest – make sure they know why you are moving.

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Analysis shows offshore wind is likely to be cheaper than nuclear within a short time

Looking at a series of nuclear plants in the UK, it was found that each were going to be charging roughly £60 per megawatt hour by 2050.

Offshore wind however was predicted to be charging £39.65.

These are both in the ballpark of what is currently charged for coal. This means that whether the future clean energy is largely wind and solar based or is based on nuclear, the price is going to be lower than what it currently costs through coal.

This information should be used to encourage other countries, particularly places like China, that it is more expensive to continue to burn coal. Not only is it better for the planet, but it is cheaper for your consumers – as well as not risking their health through large quantities of emissions.

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Does the UK government care about River pollution?

New rules on polluting rivers came into force in the UK in 2018. Despite a documented 243 cases of unauthorised pollution not one fine was issued.

One argument is that the environmental agency is being poorly funded by the government, and therefore doesn’t have the resources. Of the roughly 10000 environmental agency staff in the UK only 40 are responsible for inspecting farms, meaning that each farm should be inspected roughly once every two centuries.

In defence the environmental agency said that well no fines or prosecutions were mounted 14 letters of warning were sent. The idea that this is a defence of their success rate is quite peculiar. It is clear that in its current form the environmental agency is completely incapable doing the job it is given to do. This needs to change in fast if we are to have a country that has a good environment for both us and the animals we share the the land with.

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How can an average UK household reduce their carbon footprint?

The average UK household has a footprint of around 20 tonnes. Now it is true, that this is well below USA emissions as that is for 4 people – so average emissions of around 5 tonnes per head.

However, with relatively small adjustments, this can be cut dramatically. 12.3% of emissions come from heating, and a further 10.4% comes from electricity.

Furthermore, a significant cut can be made through replacing beef mince with Turkey mince. This can reduce your food carbon footprint by as much as 50%, and given that most mince is eaten in dishes with other foods, it is often unnoticeable

Continue reading “How can an average UK household reduce their carbon footprint?”
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In Britain, the may gales allowed record amounts of electricity to be made from wind turbines

One of the real pushes in the UK towards clean energy is through the vast wind turbine farms placed out in the North sea.

With expectations of these growing dramatically over the next decade, these areas are very windy and therefore an incredibly reliable source of electricity generation.

Due to more and more wind turbines being built this record will not hold. At the moment wind power makes up roughly 20% of Britain’s energy generation. Over boxing day during a large storm, wind power produce more than 50% of the UK’s electricity.

Last year was the first time that more electricity came from renewables (wind water sunlight and wood) which produced 42% of the electricity in the UK compared to the 41% that came from fossil fuel sources.

This clearly suggests the UK has some way to go. However as the UK increasingly brings more and more wind farms online, and the pace of solar generation starts to pick up again after the government’s foolish eradication of financial support, it is conceivable that in the next 20 years the remaining 41% of our power generation reliant on fossil fuels could fall all too close to zero.

One of the big advances in recent years is the vast batteries that are starting to come online. In the past peaker plants (these are power plants that come online to support high periods of demand) have been the most dirty power. These are likely to quickly be replaced by batteries as they are expensive to run.

For the first time the idea of running a carbon-neutral economy, does not seem that far-fetched when looking at our current setup

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