The Slow Burning Fuse of Sustainability

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The Slow Burning Fuse of Sustainability

press-release

Thu, 15 Jun 2006 17:41:31 +0100

 

 

 

 

 

The Institute of Science in Society Science Society

Sustainability http://www.i-sis.org.uk

 

General Enquiries sam

Website/Mailing List press-release

ISIS Director m.w.ho

 

This article can be found on the I-SIS website at

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/SBFOS.php

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ISIS Press Release 15/06/06

The Slow Burning Fuse of Sustainability

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Alan Simpson MP offers a future vision when

an interconnected network of local energy sources will serve

the nation and great ideas on how to get there

 

Revolution in energy policy that began 200 years ago It is

very British that a revolution that will change our lives

profoundly over the coming years actually began its course

almost 200 years ago. This is a revolution in energy policy.

 

The change is in a shift from assumptions that energy

systems are about big power generation that must struggle to

keep up with insatiable consumer demand, to a recognition

that the future will be shaped within a national system of

local energy networks; a system where every part of our

existence – our home, our roads, our workplaces, schools and

hospitals – are generators of sustainable energy rather than

just consumers of it.

 

This isn't `pie-in-the-sky' thinking. It is already

happening now; and being driven by local visionaries and

engineers who have metamorphosed into eco-engineers,

holistic scientists and sustainability designers. The more I

became immersed in the construction of my own eco-house, the

more I entered a world that is both humbling and

exhilarating. Some 80 percent of new buildings in Berlin

have solar powered energy generators. Holland has installed

`hot road' energy systems under asphalt road surfaces that

provide heating or cooling for local houses. (Every 1 km of

road heats about 400 houses). Toronto is replacing energy

guzzling, air conditioning systems in modern buildings, with

a cooling system that circulates (and returns) water from

Lake Ontario. Woking, in England, has installed its own

local wiring system, generates 135 percent of its own energy

needs, and will be coming off the National Grid in the next

few years.

 

On an even bigger scale, the Mayor of London's Climate

Change Programme aims to make London energy self-sufficient

within a decade, and up to twenty global cities are in

discussions with London about doing the same. When you

consider that London currently consumes more energy than the

entirety of either Portugal or Ireland, you realise the

scale of the revolution we are talking about. And not one

bit of the energy will come from nuclear power.

 

`Gas and Water' socialism began in 1817 I turn the clock

back to where it all began. The year was 1817, and at the

junction of Water Street and what was to become Gas Street,

the City of Manchester built the country's first gasworks.

The revolutionary body behind this was the Manchester Police

Commissioners who, eleven years earlier, had asked a local

manufacturer to fit a gas lamp over the entrance to the

police station. Crowds would gather at night to marvel at

the piddling little flame that lit the entrance. But the

Commissioners became convinced that this was the answer to

their street lightning problems. In reality it became so

much more.

 

By the time Joseph Chamberlain led Birmingham into an era

that championed municipal democracy and `Gas and Water'

socialism in the 1870s, there were already forty-nine

municipal gas companies around the country. Leeds and

Glasgow had joined Manchester as the early pioneers in a

movement that grew from local visionaries rather than the

national parliament.

 

What all of these cities did was to recognise they could

deliver energy security for their citizens and use profits

from the gas undertakings to fund an infrastructure of civic

amenities that dramatically enhanced the quality of life for

their people.

 

Between 1852 and 1861 sufficient profits were passed from

the municipal gas company to the Improvement Committee for

Manchester to install its first decent public water supply

system, along with the drains and sanitation network to

support it.

 

By 1884, Birmingham had cut the price of gas to its citizens

by 30 percent in the ten years since its Gas Company had

formed. It had also built a new recreation ground and was

using gas profits, through the Municipal Water Committee, to

deliver a public, clean water system.

 

How did all this happen? Without doubt it tapped in to a

strange combination of socialist vision and the

vulnerability of capitalism at the time. Then, as now, big

businesses wanted access to secure and cheap energy

supplies. Britain was emerging from an era of `shopocracy'

in which the over-riding obsession of the Establishment was

low taxes.

 

The result was low investment, short-termism, slums, cities

that were health nightmares and a level of illiteracy that

blighted society as much as individual lives. In exchange

for energy security, industry had reached the stage where it

was happier to see gas profits municipally re-invested in

local infrastructures than pocketed by outside speculators.

That is what Woking and the Mayor of London are seeking to

do now.

 

Sustainability Bonds Virtually all of the cities pioneering

this Gas and Water socialism either raised the initial money

in local taxes (the Rates) or in issuing Public Bonds. If

cities today offered `Sustainability Bonds' to do the same

we would see a flood tide of money to support them. From

individual households who wanted to become stakeholders in a

sustainable energy future, to pension funds that wanted to

protect their members from another dot.com debacle, there

would be no shortage of backers. The result would be a

revolution of unimaginably exciting proportions. And it is

already beginning to happen.

 

In 1997, the small island of Samso was designated Denmark's

`renewable energy island'. Now its straw and woodchip

district heating plants, its wind turbines and solar power

systems provide all the island's energy needs.

 

Exciting possibilities now Today's argument is about what

system replaces incineration. Do you go for gasification of

wood chips, or bio-digesters (producing gas and a `residue'

of high grade garden fertiliser) or bio-reactors (offering

gas and bio-fuels)? Is the answer to look into a different

direction combining wind or solar generators and hydrogen

cells? It is a debate I am excited about.

 

It is the way we think about today's energy systems that is

hopelessly out of date. Look at any power station you pass

and the billowing plumes of steam they emit are testimony to

the 60 percent of energy inputs they throw away into the

sky. Then, energy gets fed into a National Grid that leaks

like a sieve. By the time the electricity gets through the

`distributor' and `supplier' charges in the network, four

fifths of the original energy input has disappeared. We

could run the British economy simply on the energy we throw

away – if only we produced and distributed it differently.

 

New municipal energy companies could sell energy services

rather than energy consumption. In much the same way that

big companies now lease their computers rather than buy

them, the new energy companies could offer energy services

packages to the public. For a fixed price (tied only to

inflation) you could be offered micro-generation systems for

your own home, alongside upgrading the energy efficiency of

the home itself. If the energy company kept the surplus

energy generated it might even pay them to offer to install

low energy appliances throughout the house as part of the

package.

 

It is a vision no more (and no less) radical than that

offered by the Gas and Water socialists of the 19th century.

Today's challenge is to create networks of local energy

systems, safe from terrorist attacks, able to survive

environmental change, and light in the ecological footprint

they impose on the century ahead.

 

In the coming month, Manchester will have another landmark.

The 400ft Cooperative Insurance tower will display the

largest array of solar panels anywhere in the country. As

one commentator put it, the building will generate enough

energy to make 9 million cups of tea a year. But its

significance will be as a symbol not as the solution.

 

The tower stands alone. If its heating and cooling still

depend on air conditioning then the developers should be

sacked. It if ignores the issue of water recycling it will

fail to make the connections that City leaders made two

centuries earlier. But it will still be a reminder of where

we should be going if we are to catch up with European

partners.

 

In the Netherlands, acoustic barriers along motorways are

topped with solar panels that provide energy for housing and

industry. Wind turbines along their A15 motorway will

generate 60MW of electricity for the Gelderland province by

2010. All of the motorways in Britain could easily be lit by

solar and wind energy if we simply had the vision and the

political will to do so.

 

And that's the rub. Today's parliament is no more than a

19th century shopocracy. Obsessed with empowering the

individual, it has lost sight of the collective. However,

the fate of the 21st century will be shaped by the politics

of interdependency and not of individualism. The pioneers

and visionaries who would build our New Jerusalem's are no

longer waiting for a government that will not come. They are

driven by an excitement that fuels itself. Grasp it, and we

too may yet say:

 

" Bliss it was in that dawn to be alive

 

But to be young was very heaven " ;

 

All we need is to harness the youthfulness of our dreams

rather than of our limbs. And the best thing is that we can

do it together.

 

This paper was circulated for the Launch Conference as Alan

had a last-minute alternative engagement he could not

refuse. A version of this paper was previously published in

Resurgence.

 

Don't miss out! Order your copy of Which Energy?

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/onlinestore/books.php#238 £7

 

Audio CD of launch conference

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/onlinestore/av.php#241 £5

 

Both the report and audio CD

http://www.i-sis.org.uk/onlinestore/books.php#242 £10

 

 

 

 

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General Enquiries sam

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